How reporters should interview Donald Trump

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To hear CNN chief Chris Licht put it, the American public was “served well” by his network’s recent “town hall” event with former President Donald Trump. Acknowledging that “you don’t have to like the former president’s answers” in a message to CNN staffers who were reportedly angry at the broadcast, Licht justified the interview by noting that CNN host Kaitlan Collins was “forced [Trump] repeat and make news. Made a lot of news.”

“That,” he said, “is our job.”

Licht’s staunch defense of the interview comes amid criticism of the broadcast’s content and his network’s culpability in helping spread the former president’s repeatedly debunked lies. But in justifying his programming decision, Licht perhaps unwittingly raises a broader question beyond the content of a town hall; by using the rationale of having “newsmaking” as “the job of his journalists,” some critics say, he confuses the distinction between medium and message, and ultimately fails to deliver the supposed promise inherent in a high-profile interview by a former president and current presidential front runner.

This, in turn, invites the inevitable follow-up dilemma: how should the news report someone who has perfected the rhetorical art of the “Gish gallop”? How can journalists effectively filter and contextualize comments from someone who chooses to overwhelm their interviewer, audience, or debate opponent with an unstoppable deluge of irrelevant and incorrect arguments? While this isn’t a new dilemma, the looming 2024 presidential election injects a new sense of urgency into an old, and still unanswered question: how do you interview Donald Trump, anyway?

Format is important

“The best case scenario where Trump’s lies/crimes/authoritarianism is meaningfully confronted and exposed is never possible in a town hall format,” HuffPost editor and extremism expert Andy Campbell tweeted as response to a report that the largely sympathetic audience at the CNN event was largely the product of invitations made by local conservative groups.

Despite Collins’ efforts to push back on some of Trump’s lies, “the problem is that the format is a rally, it’s not a town hall,” agreed MSNBC’s Willie Geist.

Given CNN’s town hall format, “the only way Collins could have been semi-succeeded is if he ignored the audience and the format entirely and instead tried to pin Trump down on every one of his mistakes and offensive. statements,” agreed MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan. The problem, then, is that within that format “the CNN anchor can’t! do that.”

Giving a politician free reign to capitalize on a network’s solid measure of trust with an audience live, and without recourse, “is really not a transaction that news organizations should be making, especially with this candidate.” ,” Hofstra University Communications School Dean Mark Lukasiewicz told PBS.

Indeed, other formats have proven themselves particularly if occasionally effective when it comes to covering Trump, contrary to the “strange amnesia about ethical and professional interviews conducted with Donald Trump over the past few years ” that appeared, according to the University. by Maine communications professor Michael Socolow. Pointing to Trump’s 2020 Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, his 60 Minutes sit-down with Lesley Stahl that same year, and the massively viral one-on-one with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, the common denominator seems to be “they were all taped. on video for later broadcast.” Accordingly, Socolow concluded, “the news media should not turn their live microphones and airwaves back to [Trump]but, instead, interview him while allowing his team to bring whatever video production technology he feels he needs to protect himself.

“Time to ask him new questions”

For as much of a medium as the message may be when it comes to interviewing Trump, the content of the interview itself is what matters at the end of the day. At that point, a number of commentators focused on the specific questions being asked as the make-or-break factor in a successful interview with Trump. Because “getting into the weeds of factual disputes with Trump, even if he’s proven wrong, is not a fruitful way to question him,” Washington Post columnist Ramesh Ponnuru said recently. “It’s time to ask him new questions.”

But simply asking new questions, no matter how aggressive they may be, still gives Trump the opportunity to deliver an “acid trip of an answer,” as journalist Simon Hattenstone wrote in 2017. To that end, Hattenstone recommends asking questions that are “simple” and “unambiguous” while predicting that “in the next few years, in the so-called ‘post-truth; age, interviewing may become more and more difficult.”

Furthermore, it is not only offering pointed questions, but having the patience to ask for an answer that is important. “You let him talk until it’s clear he’s not going to answer and then you ask again,” suggested journalist Hamilton Nolan after Trump’s town hall. “Cut his mic, if necessary. He won’t like that. It doesn’t matter. Ask the obvious question again. If he doesn’t give a clear answer, ask it again. The same question. Ask it again. Ask it. this again. Ask again. Ask again.”

“This has never been done to the best of my knowledge,” he said. “You can, but.”

Although the questions are not answered specifically, the process itself can produce an important result where “you may not be able to prevent [then-]the president lies, but you can stop him from looking powerful,” Financial Times columnist Henry Mance wrote in 2020. For a politician whose entire career seems to be based more on assertive impressions of competence than enumerated ones policy details, that may be the most important takeaway the interviewer can provide.

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