Donald Trump received numerous applause breaks during his CNN town hall in New Hampshire Wednesday night, but he failed to impress those who are going to decide the next election, according to Rep. Jeff Jackson (D) of North Carolina.
Trump hailed the largely receptive audience after the event, and CNN was accused of packing the house with 400 sympathetic voters. Yet his spreading of false information and joking about writer E. Jean Carroll - the woman he was recently found liable of assaulting and defaming - did nothing to move the needle for swing voters, Jackson said on MSNBC Wednesday night.
Speaking on The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, Jackson said there isn't anything the media can do to solve the "Trump problem."
"Look, I think your instinct, and you said at the top of the show, how can media sort of solve for this? And it can't. That's really frustrating, but it's true," Jackson said. "Your job is going to remain the same, frankly, no matter who the Republican nominee is. It's to be straightforward and honest in your reporting. That won't solve for the Trump problem. It should. Being able to expose who this guy is should be enough to make him unelectable, but it's not."
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But there is an upside, according to Jackson.
"The good news is that up to 200,000 or so people who are actually going to determine the outcome of the next presidential election, the swing voters who live in the three or four key swing states, he didn't win over those people tonight," he said to the host. "Doubling down about his lies about the election, doubling down about January six, mocking the person he was just found liable for sexually abusing. Those people, they were not the ones clapping and cheering in that auditorium tonight."
Those swing voters, Jackson said, are the ones who are "going to decide the outcome of this next election."
