Coop Scoop: CNN Makes Trump An Offer He Can't Refuse -- A Giant Bundle of Free Prime Time
Trump's "Town Hall" Is a Wholly Manufactured CNN TV Show and It's an Outrage
May 10, 2023
By Marc Cooper
Looks like CNN’s new chair and CEO, Chris Licht, might be trying to outdo his disgraced predecessor, Jeff Zucker, by giving an enormous, unwarranted, ill-advised, deeply cynical and screamingly outrageous gift to Donald J. Trump in a completely artificial Town Hall Wednesday nite.
Licht is hardly some sort of genius. Since taking over last year, he has managed to push CNN’c ratings down from the toilet bowl deeper into the main drain. I mean, Bill Maher in a prime time “news” slot? A new weekly program with Gayle King and Charles Barkley? You gotta be kidding.
But, wait. There’s more. Licht has green-lighted what is essentially a multi-million dollar chunk of free prime time air tonite to Trump. Licht has also made the mind-bending statement that only a dull-witted mainstream journalist can make by saying CNN intends to cover Trump “as if he were any other candidate.” Sounds like part of a canned ethics lecture from a 89 year old over-the-hill journalism professor.
Oh, yeah, I get it. Good point. I guess most other candidates have been twice impeached, have been found liable by a jury –today!—of sexual abuse and defamation, are currently under federal indictment for illegal campaign donations, has boasted of grabbing random pussies, have issued on the order of 30,000 lies in 6 years, have called for suspending the constitution, have mulled over seizing voting machines and was the central figure in a multi-level plot to nullify a democratic election and planned to remain in office indefinitely for which he is facing another set of very serious federal indictments including wire fraud for fleecing supporters out of a quarter billion dollars.
Yep. Sure. Just like any other regular candidate. Hey everybody does it, right? I guess so in the shriveled desiccated mind of CNN CEO Licht.
Licht is just a deplorable asshole in an expensive suit looking to bump up his miserable, and I do mean miserable ratings. Hey, Trump said it himself, suggesting (perhaps honestly) that it was CNN who came to him with the idea. A CNN spokesperson also told The. Washington Post: “We offered him the opportunity to connect with New Hampshire voters via the live televised CNN Town Hall event.” Trump was delighted to respond in a tweet. Why not when Xmas comes early!
Let’s be clear about one simple salient fact. If CNN were to argue, as some will, that Trump running for president makes real news and it is legitimate for any news outfit to cover it, I would agree.
Problem is, this is NOT part of Trump’s campaign. This is in now way a news event. This is not an open event he placed and organized on his sked. This guy is even saying, for now, he will not bother to participate in any of the upcoming primary debates organized by his own Republican Party. His campaign stops are orchestrated top to bottom and populated with the most fanatical Trumplicans that can be found.
The CNN Town Hall tonight is a wholly manufactured event by the network itself. It is a live TV show that CNN cooked up with the former president and future convict taking questions from an audience that, according to CNN, will be made up exclusively of “Republicans and Independents.” In other words, the questions will come from several brigades of soft-headed soft ball pitchers -- many of whom merely swoon at the sight of this gaseous shitbag, And in even sharper words, this is a god damn fricking insult to the American people from a third rate network increasingly adrift. And they are doing it live, for no good reason, other than to pray and hope for a viral Trump Monologue Malfunction in which he howls at the moon in a rare German dialect.
Licht has been on a jihad the last year to defang CNN in the eyes of Trump viewers. Once pretty milquetoast in political terms (ever hear Wolf Blitzer struggle to get out a complete sentence on a late nite talk show?), CNN turned markedly anti-Trump during his last years in office. Anchor Don Lemon, recently canned by Licht, was a lightning rod for Trump supporters who accused him of everything except being White. Understanding this Town Hall at this early date must be understood in the context of Chris Licht kissing Trumps’ ass in the hope of some reciprocal kind words from the Big Bag Of Wind telling his worshippers it’s no longer sinful to watch CNN.
Period.
There is one tantalizing unknown here. Actually, two. It’s possible that maybe one of the audience members bullshitted their way into the program and are planning to ask Trump a ball breaker question, or better yet, just directly confront him. I doubt it, but as Trump said, “Let’s see!”
The other interrogative rests in the person of CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins who will “moderate” the Town Hall. She will be the boss. But will she? The 31 year old was chief White House correspondent for CNN till last year when she was moved to host a morning show. The Washington Post in its infinite and unchallengeable wisdom deems that Collins “has admirers on the right and left.” No shit? I don’t know any lefties who have much good to say about her but then again I don’t watch CNN for more than 47 seconds at a time. In any case, what CNN classifies as “the left” is probably Joe Manchin. In my case, I remember Collins mostly from her pre-CNN days when she was a “reporter” for what was then Tucker Carlson’s web rag, The Daily Caller.
I know she’s matured quite a bit since being a lap dog for Tucker. And the few times I have seen her in the White House press room she seemed a competent adult if, like many of her male and female peers, she also seemed to be a bit of an Attention Ho. Collins is visibly ambitious if nothing else. She’s high energy and intrusive. The Town Hall will be a seminal event for her no matter what.
If afterwards, she is praised for “cool, professional management” of a “solid two hours where the major issues were aired” then you will know she has totally failed. The proper headline should read: CNN Host Stirs Town Hall By Live Fact-Checking Trump. That would suggest a positive evening. That might also cost her perch at CNN but she would also become the most bankable commodity in the media industry.
We can only guess what kind of extreme fuckery Trump will engage in during the show. And God only knows what kind of feverishly babbled questions will issue forth from his supporters. But I am interested In what Collins does, or does not do. She holds all the power as this is not a campaign event but rather just a fancy TV show of which she is the host and umpire.
We will know within the first 5 minutes if this will be just one more gift of free air time to Trump, the first big chunk in this presidential cycle. The first and many more of the questions should be about the real issues facing Donald Trump. If the first 45 minutes or hour of questions are not about January 6, not about his indictment, not about the Proud Boys convicted of sedition, about his thoughts about going to jail, about his CEO, CFO, Campaign Chief and Personal Lawyer all being felons, and if Collins is not very aggressive in fact checking and thwarting what will be his stream of whoppers, then you can easily score this event as a victory for Trump and one more reason to switch off CNN. The more he is treated “like any other candidate” the worse for the country. ++
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