A new report from The Atlantic's Tim Alberta documents how CNN boss Chris Licht completely ruined any shot he had at rehabilitating his network in the wake of its widely criticized town hall with former President Donald Trump.
Alberta starts off by documenting how Licht initially planned to use the town hall as an olive branch to American conservatives to show that his network was willing to give the former president a venue where he could get a fair hearing.
What actually happened, however, was that Trump steamrolled over host Kaitlan Collins for two hours and somehow managed to anger Americans across the political spectrum.
"Licht knew this was bad—very, very bad," Alberta writes of the CNN boss's reaction in the wake of the town hall. "Republicans were angry at CNN. Democrats were angry at CNN. Journalists were angry at CNN. The only one who wasn’t angry, it seemed, was Trump, most likely because he’d succeeded in disgracing the network on its own airwaves."
Alberta goes on to argue that Licht was right to blow off criticism from Democrats and others about "platforming" Trump given that polls show Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the 2024 Republican Party nomination.
However, he writes that filling up the audience with hardcore MAGA devotees may have been a fatal error.
"This was no ordinary collection of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, as CNN had claimed it would be," he noted. "Most of them were diehards, fanboys, political zealots who were likelier to show up at a rally with a MAGA flag than come to a coffee shop with a policy question. These folks hadn’t turned out to participate in some good-faith civic ritual. They were there to celebrate Trump’s continued assault on the media."
