Trump town hall fiasco shows why people don’t trust cable news


Donald Trump’s appearance on CNN for a live town hall inspired countless stories about the merits of giving the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner air time. The network was raked over the coals by liberal politicians and viewers for hosting Trump. And while the event delivered a big bump in ratings for the network, the boost didn’t last very long.

Straight Arrow News contributor Larry Lindsey says the Trump town hall fiasco shows why people simply don’t trust cable news anymore.

It’s no secret that cable news is in trouble. CNN and Fox both have seen their ratings decline. In the case of CNN, it was because of the reaction to the town hall they had where Trump was being interviewed. And for Fox, it was their firing of Tucker Carlson. Let’s start with the numbers. 

CNN is now number four with just 335,000 viewers. That’s behind Fox with 1.44 million, MSNBC with 1.08 million, and Newsmax with 357,000, which by the way, has done better because of the meltdown at Fox.

At 8 p.m., Tucker used to draw 3 million viewers. Now his replacement draws less than a third of that. In fact, Greg Gutfeld at 11 o’clock, who’s basically a late-night comedian, leads the rest of the entire Fox lineup. And in the 25-to-54 demographic, he leads them by two to one. [On] CNN it’s been the attacks on how they handle the Trump town hall.

The truth is, Trump crushed the interviewer and the audience helped in the process. For example, they started off with 20 minutes of questions entirely focused on the past; on Trump’s election claims about losing in 2020 when he should have been winning, and about January 6. Fair enough. Trump has problems on both of those counts. But the audience saw this 20 minutes of constant attacks on his past performance as a bit of news bullying, which they believed was widely true anyway. And so as the questioning went on, the audience cheered more and more. And remember, the purpose of the town hall was for primary voters, i.e. Republicans. Why would you take an entirely Democrat criticism approach as a result?