From the day he turned his attention from grifting in the real estate world to running for president in 2015, former President Donald Trump has presented journalists with a serious dilemma: How does a news organization shine a spotlight on a strangely charismatic, bullying, brazen liar without becoming his target or his enabler?
CNN demonstrated how not to do it on Wednesday night when the cable news channel hosted a so-called town hall event in New Hampshire with Trump as the star of the evening. CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins brought up a worthy list of topics for the ex-president to address, but when it became clear his responses were almost entirely built on obvious falsehoods, slander and approval of criminality, she was unable to effectively challenge, or fact check him. Collins was locked in a lion’s den of CNN’s own design, and she was not one of the lions.
Trump is especially adept at rudely muscling his way past the polite objections of sober interlocutors like Collins and, at this event, he had a very sympathetic crowd cheering him on as he did it. CNN had chosen the format and picked a studio audience dominated by Republican fans of Trump. They laughed when he demeaned E. Jean Carroll, the woman who had just won a lawsuit that made Trump liable for sexual abuse and slander. They applauded when he announced his intention to pardon many of the people jailed for participating in the violent Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. And they approved of him calling Collins “nasty” for having the temerity to ask him serious questions.
Critics are blasting CNN for producing what was, in effect, a Trump campaign rally in which he repeated untruths, including his utterly bogus claim to have won the 2020 election. It would have been more responsible to have taped a one-on-one interview that could have included fact checking before it hit the airwaves. Trump, though, would likely not have agreed to that format and CNN’s new chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, may not have approved either. Licht’s announced intention is to win back some of the conservative viewers CNN has lost to Fox News. His concern is ratings, not journalism nor threats to democracy.
But a free press and healthy democracy are at risk with Trump’s candidacy. Trump is a twice-impeached president who is very likely to face indictments for his attempts to undermine an election. He is a dishonest businessman who has been found in court to have run a scam university and a self-aggrandizing charity. He is a loathsome lothario known to boast of grabbing women by their genitals who has been accused of sexual assault by numerous women. He is a political provocateur with a devoted following among right-wing militants, crackpot conspiracy mongers, white nationalists and neo-Nazis. What Trump is not is a normal political candidate and news organizations should not pretend that he is. Donald Trump is quite likely going to be the Republican Party nominee for president, but journalists cannot follow the same rules that applied to Mitt Romney or John McCain or George W. Bush. Trump is not a McCain, he is a Mussolini.
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