CNN covering 2019 Democratic Presidential debate
This week, CNN announced that it will host Donald Trump for a “town hall” event on May 10 in New Hampshire. This is a format that CNN likes to use with presidential candidates, and is essentially a one-on-one conversation with a CNN anchor or correspondent, on stage in front of an audience (some of whom get to ask questions as well), and televised live. Sometimes CNN interviews several candidates, one after the other, at the same event, and other times they hold a shorter event with just one candidate.
A number of Democrats, however, are reacting very badly to CNN’s announcement regarding the Donald Trump town hall. For example, in perusing various websites and social media platforms, statements and comments like these can be seen:
CNN is so desperate to boost its ratings, it will provide more free publicity for Trump.
Sure, have fascist insurrectionist town hall meetings air on cable news as if he hasn’t just been indicted and have 14 other investigations taking place in to his criminal activity, is just run of the mill normal. Nothing to be alarmed about, just another day in America.
It’s preposterous that CNN would invite someone to hold a purely political event who is currently being probed for his efforts to steal an election and stage a violent coup against the government of the United States.
In fact, however, CNN typically hosts town halls with individual announced presidential candidates, and Trump formally announced his candidacy for 2024 last November. Similarly, from 2019 to 2020, CNN held such town halls with Democratic presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Tom Steyer. In 2016, CNN did town halls with Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump on the Republican side, as well as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley for the Democrats. These were well-publicized and often widely viewed events, as reflected in our reviews of the Elizabeth Warren and Clinton/Sanders/O’Malley town halls.
Obviously, though, Trump is the elephant in the room, and folks who object to CNN’s town hall invite may have valid concerns, for a couple of reasons. First, Trump used to attack CNN as “fake news,” sometimes right to a CNN reporter’s face, even at news conferences where serious questions are expected. This raises the issue why CNN should now reward Trump with free airtime. Second, Trump has been accused of everything from rape to insurrection to fraud, and faces investigations and legal proceedings for his behavior. Thus, the objection essentially is that CNN should not legitimize Trump with a town hall.
But let’s face it: CNN is a corporation whose goal is profits. It is not a public service agency whose only concern is to inform the public. CNN is not even a free TV broadcast network, but rather a cable network which requires a paid cable subscription to view on TV (some free web content aside). Thus, it would be absurdly naive to think that CNN is supposed to simply ignore Donald Trump, who not only is a Republican presidential candidate, he is by far the leading candidate who is expected to win the Republican Party presidential nomination for 2024.
With that reality in mind, here’s what the standard should be: as long as CNN holds equivalent town halls for the other candidates in terms of type of venue, time allotted, types of questions, etc., then hosting Trump first is not by itself problematic. For example, Nimrata “Nikki“ Haley announced her presidential campaign last February, three months after Trump made his announcement. That is a valid reason to book Trump first. Likewise, Ron DeSantis, who is currently embarrassing himself on a world tour, is expected to announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination this month, if he doesn’t self-destruct first. At some point soon, therefore, CNN announcements regarding town halls with Haley and DeSantis would be expected. Likewise, among the Democrats, there are at least three announced presidential candidates: President Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Marianne Williamson. Obviously, we don’t know what the status of booking/scheduling conversations between CNN and these candidates is, and the presidential primaries are nearly a year away. However, we fully expect CNN to host town halls with these other candidates, as long as they meet some minimum criteria, such as poll ratings, to be considered “major” or serious candidates by CNN.
Thus, it will take a little longer to know whether CNN is acting in an equitable manner or not in this case, and that includes asking Donald Trump tough questions at his town hall about his indictment for and arraignment for fraud, his rape/defamation lawsuit, his theft of classified documents, his incitement of the January 6 insurrection, his attempt to steal votes in the 2020 election, and his other legal and criminal predicaments. If that does not happen, or if invites to other presidential candidates are not forthcoming, then critics will be correct in taking CNN to task.
Photo by Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/OKfA1F
