5 Ways In Which CNN Could Have Avoided The Trump Town Hall Disaster

By exercising basic common sense

I don’t usually like watching the news when I wake up. But today, I was a little curious about what was going on in the world when I saw the #boycottCNN hashtag on Twitter. I wondered what the hell had happened during my night here in Europe for that to trend and was immediately hit with a diarrhea of coverage about CNN’s Trump town hall in New Hampshire the night before.

It felt as though I was back in 2016. I observed a self-assured, boastful Trump waving his arms around in characteristic Trumpian maestro fashion. There he was, proud as a peacock, repeating his lies as though they were truths, announcing that if he was elected, he’d end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and asserting that he would pardon most of those responsible for the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, because they were good people.

As he re-iterated these lies, the audience was mesmerized, enamored, clapping at every turn. The one question that came to my mind was this:

What the hell was CNN thinking?

They bought a wolf into the hen house and didn’t expect it to voraciously gobble everything in sight? Really, how idiotic can you be?

As I watched the interview carry on and on and on, it was like watching a car speeding toward a concrete wall. At one point, you knew that the inevitable crash would happen. The anchorwoman, Kaitlan Collins, tried her best, but Trump won the show, and in so doing, with all the visibility the channel gave him, assured his victory as the next president of the United States.

Mark my words, CNN, who loves to see itself as the savior of morality and decency, CNN, which has always expressed disgust and opposition to the president’s views and ways, has become the one element to set him off on the path to success. Isn’t that ironic?

Here are 5 ways they could have avoided what happened last night.

1. Better screening of the audience. It was clear from the overzealous claps from the audience that most of the people in that theatre were MAGA/Trump supporters. CNN should have done a way better job of getting a balanced audience from all sides of the political spectrum in the room. That was a significant oversight on their part.
2. Over the years I have observed Trump, I’ve realized that he does not disrespect Black women as much as white women. Michelle Obama had a lot to say about his crassness, but he rarely retaliated. That tells me one thing: he must know that we as Black women, wouldn’t stand for that. CNN should have selected a Black anchorwoman to do this interview. I doubt that Trump would have ever had the nerve to call her a nasty person as he did with the white anchorwoman. He clearly does not respect white women since he tends to «grab them by the pussy».
3. My third point may sound radical but CNN should have had the courage to just stop airing the show. I don’t care how many millions it would have cost them, once Trump started spewing lies and disrespecting the anchor, they should have just stopped the whole damn thing. By letting the program continue, they gave Trump a huge platform to spew his delirious mistruths and gain even more supporters. Shame on them.
4. If anchorwoman you must have, then why have only one? We all know that Trump is a bully that loves to pick apart and humiliate his prey. Why did CNN find it a good idea to only have one interviewer? They should have packed on two or even three so that Trump was outnumbered, outpowered, and outmaneuvered.
5. A strategic error was the line of questioning. The questions should have centered around what his plans are for the future – if he were to be elected come 2024. The questions should not have focussed on the past. We know that the man is a disgruntled loser, why give him the opportunity to comment on the past – i.e. the presidential elections and the January 6 Capitol Hill riots? Doing that just gave him a huge opportunity to send a smoke signal to his base and start organizing old and new voters to elect him into office in 2024.

All in all, CNN displayed deplorable judgment in running this interview with Trump. They’ve lost a tonne of credibility in the last 24 hours because of that stupid move.

Something tells me however that the decision to move ahead with this nonsense was taken in a room full of old, privileged white men. Any Black or brown person who had directly or indirectly faced the brunt of Trump’s bullying and or racism, would have told you that it was a bad idea to let that wolf into the hen house.

Those white men made their decision in their corner with other like-minded men. There were no diverse voices in the room, I can tell you that. As a Black woman, I see white men take decisions like this every day. It makes me chuckle because they never learn.

In this case, that group of white men didn’t think Trump would dare be himself, but they were wrong, he outsmarted them all.

The way it stands right now, it seems like it is rather CNN than Fox that will hand over the keys to the White House to Trump for his second term. I hope you’re all getting ready for another spin on that crazy merry-go-round.

Thank you for reading my perspective.