What’s CNN thinking?: our panel on Donald Trumps town hall | Moira Donegan, Moustafa Bayoumi, Bhaskar Sunkara and Lloyd Green

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Lloyd Green: Democrats should start worrying

On Wednesday night, Donald Trump showed why he leads the 2024 Republican field. The viewers are his from hello. The town hall is a prime-time infomercial. Kaitlan Collins, the moderator, was unopposed. For good measure, he called him a rude person and questioned his intelligence.

Trump arrived amid a standing ovation and repeatedly sparred with CNN’s Collins. He ordered congressional Republicans to go on the fiscal cliff and trigger a default but waffled on a federal abortion ban.

The 45th president repeated the lies that fueled the insurrection and repeatedly insisted the 2020 election was rigged. He expressed no remorse for Mike Pence’s near-death by hanging.

Trump beatified Ashli ​​Babbitt, shot the Capitol rioter and promised to pardon most of the rioters on January 6. For Trump and his minions, law and order depend on who and whose. As for E Jean Carroll, Trump mocked her and the $5m judgment. She was a whack job, he said.

Immigration and energy remain Trump talking points, catnip for independent and working-class voters. Democrats should start to worry. In 2020, Covid eroded Trump’s appeal while Biden had the luxury of a basement campaign. That’s gone. Trump is a natural counter-puncher. He shows no sign of relenting. 2024 is shaping up to be 2016 redux.

Moira Donegan: Trump better be afraid of women

The laughter was deafening. On stage at CNN’s disastrous town hall, former president Trump recounted the rape allegations of E Jean Carroll, the columnist who won her case against him for sexual abuse and defamation just yesterday. Trump addressed Carrolls character’s ex-husband, addressing the man in a kind of manly camaraderie, saying he felt bad for his marriage to Carroll. She claimed that Carroll was promiscuous for going to a dressing room in a department store with her, and that she never met him either. She complained that she was not allowed to introduce her pet’s name as evidence against her at trial. And he referred to her rape accusation as hanky-panky. Most Republican voters laughed and cheered.

They also laughed, when Trump referred to former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi as crazy Nancy. And they laughed when Trump got frustrated with the moderator, CNN’s 31-year-old Kaitlan Collins. You’re a grumpy man, Ill tell you, he told her, and his fans in the audience burst into laughter. Collins, for his part, has been overwhelmed, unable to fact-check the constant stream of disinformation from Trump.

He failed to offer any correction when Trump repeatedly told inflammatory lies about abortion, lies that have incited deadly violence against medical providers. Collins instead tried to pin Trump down on whether he would sign a federal abortion ban, but Trump refused, refused to commit. According to the report, the former president was alarmed by the political fallout from the Dobbs decision. All night long, he taunts the girls for sarcastic laughs, playing on his base. But there were clearly some women he feared the most: the suffragettes.

Fact-checking Donald Trump’s CNN town hall video reportMoustafa Bayoumi: What was CNN thinking?

The surprise from CNN’s town hall on Donald Trump is not Trump. This is CNN. What are they thinking? Everything is wrong. If you’re going to host Trump, have him face a tough questioner. That’s not Kaitlan Collins. Trump spoke to him, insulted him (You are a rude person) and just ignored him, as CNN should have predicted. And why hold a town hall made up mostly of Republicans? Instead of a structure that will challenge a candidate on the issues, CNN has chosen a format that favors an audience that accepts and is ready for all Trump’s lies (It’s a rigged election), insults (in E Jean Carroll: shes a whack job), and racism (They dont even speak English in that Chinatown).

I also blame CNN for launching the nightmare of the next presidential election so early. Why are you in a hurry? So what is behind all this? Not journalistic excellence. Ratings? An attempt to fill the Trump void that currently exists at (post-Dominion Voting Systems) Fox? Whatever it was, it was bringing back a bad memory. And it illustrates the particular confluence of mass-media authoritarianism and populist entertainment that accounts for Donald Trump’s so-called charm. Consider this a warning.

Bhaskar Sunkara: It will be difficult for Trump to run as an outsider

Donald Trumps town hall tells us, on the one hand, that the 76-year-old hasn’t grown up much. He continued the name-calling, launching barbs at Nancy Pelosi, his former vice-president Mike Pence, and his new target of choice, Florida governor Ron DeSanctimious DeSantis.

He also dismissed sexual assault charges against him, repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was stolen, downplayed the 2021 Capitol riots, touted his brutal immigration policies, and more. By the standards of a recent Trump performance, this is perfectly normal.

But largely absent is the economic populism that helped propel him to victory in 2016 and once set Trump apart from the rest of the Republican field.

Gone is the emphasis on protectionism. Instead of a strong defense of social security and Medicare, Trump has sounded like a fiscal hawk when it comes to the deficit and the looming debt ceiling. If they don’t give you massive cuts, he said, you have to default, which refers to a potential sovereign debt default that could cause significant economic damage to American workers.

There was little appeal to manufacturing workers, or other blue-collar votes. Trumps record in office is closer to an establishment Republican than a firebrand, and, despite his unorthodox and abrasive style, it will be more difficult for him to run as an outsider after a failed experience in power.

That doesn’t matter to his hard-working supporters, but it leaves an opening for Biden to tout his administration’s (limited) gains for working people. The 2024 election depends on whether the president can take advantage of it.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in An Era of Extreme Inequalities

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