This is an excellent piece by Josh and one I agree with wholeheartedly.
Can I also say - has everyone developed amnesia over the last 2.5 years? We all know exactly who and what Trump is, so to act surprised, to wring one's hands and clutch one's pearls as AOC and numerous lefty commenters did yesterday, is ridiculous. He's the same person he's always been and making his every utterance a hate crime is playing right into his hands. You'd think people would have learned from the last time.
I knew he wanted to pardon them before the CNN special. Clearly he doesn't think that's going to be a liability for him in 2024. I'd never vote for Trump, never - that's a red line for me. But Biden and Harris are the most singularly uninspiring political team I've ever seen in my lifetime. We are really facing a total shit show in 2024, a depressing War of the Roses-type election with bad choices all around.
I don't have a strong view. But the guy did try to overthrow the government, so the idea that the media might want to treat him differently than other candidates seems . . . maybe not entirely crazy?
Everyone wants to pull the fire alarm but no one wants to fight the fire. So many people keep yelling: “look at how terrible he is!” - and to be clear I agree - but I don’t see what that accomplishes. Stopping Trump means either A) getting some of the people who voted for him to change their mind or B) getting some nonvoters off the sidelines and voting for us or some combo of both. But when I ask the people who love being the 20,000th person to re-tweet some dunk on Trump how that accomplishes either? Crickets.
Basically only one guy has claimed "fight the fire" mantle in the GOP primary. And it's Chris Christie. Will be curious to see how well it plays whenever the first debate is held.
CNN isn’t doing this as some project to fairly and completely cover the news. They’re doing it because their business model is in decline and they remember that sweet, sweet rush of Trump ratings.
This is the part that Josh is leaving out. It's extremely clear this is CNN just trying to goose ratings. And you know what, mission accomplished. But let's not pretend this isn't what this was.
And the other context is that there has been research showing that Trump basically got a billion dollars of free advertising from cable news and news in general because he was "ratings gold". Like I generally agree that it wasn't some sort of disaster that there was this townhall. If anything, he gave the Biden team a ton of fodder here. Including that he sort of kind of said he supports a full abortion ban, which is a different tune then he was singing even a few months ago. But I think the worry is we're going to have another election season of cable news broadcasting empty lecterns for an hour and giving Trump all sorts of free advertising.
Why does that matter? In some sense the reason all news sources do anything is profit.
Sure, maybe the individual journalists do things for other motives (and no reason to think they might not have been doing that here) but all the big decisions (do we cover politics, do we have a style section etc) are always about profit.
Doesn't change whether or not it's a good thing for society.
But having a profit motive doesn't say anything about whether they were doing useful journalism. I mean, the choice by the NYT or MSNBC to fund investigative journalism at all or to put Maddow on the air is all driven by profit. Doesn't mean they don't do any useful journalism.
It's always the case that the ultimate shareholders are profit motivated and the social value is mostly an accident.
"The complaints are that Trump lies too much, and therefore broadcasting him live will tend to misinform voters; or that he is too vicious and nasty; or that the audience is too vicious and nasty, cheering him on and making his shtick look popular and effective."
I don't know that I disagree with your final conclusion, but I think this a little dismissive of the biggest concern about Trump - his repeated attempts to stoke political violence and erode our democracy. Should a news outlet put a major political party nominee live on air if they repeatedly lie and are nasty? Yes. Should a news outlet put a major political party nominee live on air if they have repeatedly urged violence and taken steps to unjustly install themselves as president? That's a different question that I don't think you really reckon with here.
It depends on what the effect of putting them on air is.
In Trump's case there isn't any option that denies him a massive platform to communicate with his base. All you can do by denying him coverage at this point is help him sell his narrative that all these elite institutions are against his supporters and thus help him convince them we need to tear it all down.
I think you are basically correct but I despair of any progress.
Trump's secret sauce is his ability to bait mainstream media into what seem like partisan attacks so he can then tell his base: see I told you they were against you the whole time.
But I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Journalists aren't robots and when Trump personally treats them badly or disrespects their role it requires near superhuman restraint not to hit back.
On top of this add the economic incentives. Nuetral, non-partisan reporting offers incredible societal value. But it's just not what drives clicks or viewers. Absent a public funding model like the BBC I don't see how you avoid this.
My experience online is that the easiest way to get everyone furious at you is to recognize the flaws in both sides arguments. For instance, point out that Trump and his lawyers posed a serious threat to our democratic system with their attempt to deny certification but that it would be a stretch to say that Trump's speech on January 6th triggered the 14th amendment's bar on holding office and everyone hates you.
There’s always the solution of just not watching. I’m sure if I had watched I would have had to turn it off because I would have gotten frustrated. Instead I went to a brewery with friends. Much better choice!
I think this is correct. I’m just nervous Trump could win. I think a lot of people are, and that’s why they were outraged. But the key truth is this: If after all the scandals and corruption the American people vote Trump back in and want to go to hell, then so be it. That would be utterly tragic, sad, and maybe the end of democracy, but there would be nobody to blame ultimately than the voters who put him there.
The format (to say nothing of the audience) mitigated any possibility for a substantive discussion. If you compare what happened last night to Jonathan Swan‘s interview from a few years back, it’s just night and day.
A lot of the commentary about the town hall format is looking at the problem backwards. The root problem is the audience, not the candidate; that is, the electorate itself is becoming more polarized and spending more time in paranoia-inducing filter bubbles. Certainly, you can always stitch together an audience of lunatics, but these days if you scoop up a randomized handfull of Republican primary voters, most of them will act the way this audience did because they are taking cues from all the podcasts, online discussions, talking heads, etc. that comprise the modern right-wing media. And, ultimately, these are the people who give demagogues like Trump power. Have we already forgotten town hall in which McCain had to correct the assertion of an audience member that Obama was Muslim and that being Muslim is somehow disqualifying? Does it make more sense to be mad at Trump for prompting laughter at a women he sexually assaulted or for the audience having laughed at all? We know from his rallies that the former happened because of the latter.
It is easier for me to dissemble my concerns for the mirror problem with Democratic primaries because I'm left of center, but I imagine that if you scoop up a randomized handfull of Democratic primary voters, you'll get a good cross-section of people who think California should bankrupt itself paying reparations and that we should stop having children in order to save the environment. So I tend to agree with Josh that the town hall was useful and appropriate, but only because it affords an opportunity for sane, middle-of-the-road voters to see how crazy primary voters have become.
PS I live in a purple congressional district (that is soon to be gerrymandered out of existence) where the primary process produced a left-wing social justice warrior and a far-right MAGA nut. We ended up with the former only because of a technical objection to the residency of the latter by the local GOP. So I am probably biased by the trauma of watching that process play out.
Many good points. Would CNN typically give individual candidates such town halls, though? Or were the other Republican candidates invited but declined?
They did a zillion of these in 2020 and I'm sure there will be more with the other candidates in the coming months. Importantly, many of the likely candidates, including Ron DeSantis, have not yet declared.
It would be bad if the number were 1 rather than 0. I think it would be better if the number were 0 rather than a zillion. Just seems like a fundamentally flawed concept (although as you note, it's not CNN's fault to baby the process along until DeSantis or some other challenger formally appears).
If you have the whole primary field present, they act as a check on each other, including by splitting the parties' voters among them.
I thought this did not work without those two factors present. This was just Trump playing to an adoring crowd, and united with them against the ineffectual hall monitor/moderator.
If I think back to big, single-candidate events, I think the networks have traditionally presented a one-on-one interview. With good reason, in my view, as I think that would have been more effective and avoided the valid complaints here.
Completely agree. I also think trying to censor Trump feeds into the narrative of election rigging and media unfairness. Let Trump spill his nonsense from the mountaintops- last night he literally called anyone who didn’t think the election was rigged an “idiot”- and let’s see how it goes for him.
I think it was embarrassing to Trump and the GOP in general because while they think anytime he pisses off "liberals" it means they are "winning". It shows a constant reminder of just how terrible he is as a candidate, leader and person.
Additionally, by stating his unpopular and incoherent policy views or general disregard for America (e.g. abortion access for women is a negotiation chip, or since he's not president he doesn't care if we default on the debt ceiling, called the moderator a nasty woman, also he defamed Carroll again, etc...), I think it makes him look less electable, since most moderates want to move on from him too. The main issue I think most have is that a town hall like that shouldn't feel like a rally and that's what it sort of turned into. Although that is expected of any and all Trump events.
That said we can't likely ignore that Trump is such a dumpster fire that is good for ratings that CNN probably is doing it's business a disservice by not covering him. On the other hand for Democrats he constantly gives you new material for why he is a bad candidate. I do think the media did a better job last night on asking him tough questions as opposed to 6 years ago when they normalized a lot of his terrible behavior. That's just my 2 cents, however.
I touched on this somewhat in another comment. But isn't the person who should be most upset by this Ron DeSantis*? As loathe as I am to give him any benefit of the doubt, I think his team can rightfully say the MSM is trying to boost Trump because he's good for ratings at the expense of other viable GOP candidates.
And I'll repeat something I said in another comment. As much as I'm less angry about this townhall being aired then other Progressives (And will note again that Trump actually gave Democrats a ton of attack ad fodder; especially in regard to abortion), I'm as worried as anyone that we're heading down the 2016 road again; hours of footage of empty lecterns, broadcasting his rallies in full, broadcasting his press conferences in full because he'll say something completely insane and that's great ratings. All the while essentially getting free airtime to advertise himself and his message thereby giving him a huge leg up in reaching primary voters and swing voters (even if swing voters aren't watching cable, the amount of coverage it gets means they are liking hearing about it in some manner; whether that's social media, friends or recaps on the local news).
*Tim Scott and Nikki Haley could also be counted as being rightfully aggrieved. But while in theory they are actually probably two of the best general election candidates GOP could put up, let's be real; the chances of either being viable are slim to none unless Trump keels over from too many cheeseburgers.
I love this article. Ultimately, Trump is news. He should be treated as such, and given the same attention (not more, not less) than any other candidate would be who is the front runner at this stage in a primary.
This is an excellent piece by Josh and one I agree with wholeheartedly.
Can I also say - has everyone developed amnesia over the last 2.5 years? We all know exactly who and what Trump is, so to act surprised, to wring one's hands and clutch one's pearls as AOC and numerous lefty commenters did yesterday, is ridiculous. He's the same person he's always been and making his every utterance a hate crime is playing right into his hands. You'd think people would have learned from the last time.
> Can I also say - has everyone developed amnesia over the last 2.5 years? We all know exactly who and what Trump is, so to act surprised
I like to think I'm a jaded news viewer, but I was also surprised!
I now know that Trump wants to pardon the January 6th criminals. But I didn't know that before watching.
I thought the MAGA line was that the bad January 6ers were actually antifa ruining the good name of MAGA, but I'm clearly not current.
However online I am, it's apparently not enough to be unsurprised.
And that's just one topic. And I suspect I'm not alone.
I knew he wanted to pardon them before the CNN special. Clearly he doesn't think that's going to be a liability for him in 2024. I'd never vote for Trump, never - that's a red line for me. But Biden and Harris are the most singularly uninspiring political team I've ever seen in my lifetime. We are really facing a total shit show in 2024, a depressing War of the Roses-type election with bad choices all around.
> a depressing War of the Roses-type election with bad choices all around
That's a bit dramatic unless you think RFK Jr. is going to win the Democratic primary.
I think Biden's been a pretty darn good President. I'd be very happy for his next term to be like his current one.
I don't have a strong view. But the guy did try to overthrow the government, so the idea that the media might want to treat him differently than other candidates seems . . . maybe not entirely crazy?
Everyone wants to pull the fire alarm but no one wants to fight the fire. So many people keep yelling: “look at how terrible he is!” - and to be clear I agree - but I don’t see what that accomplishes. Stopping Trump means either A) getting some of the people who voted for him to change their mind or B) getting some nonvoters off the sidelines and voting for us or some combo of both. But when I ask the people who love being the 20,000th person to re-tweet some dunk on Trump how that accomplishes either? Crickets.
Basically only one guy has claimed "fight the fire" mantle in the GOP primary. And it's Chris Christie. Will be curious to see how well it plays whenever the first debate is held.
CNN isn’t doing this as some project to fairly and completely cover the news. They’re doing it because their business model is in decline and they remember that sweet, sweet rush of Trump ratings.
If this is a one-off, I’ll eat my hat.
This is the part that Josh is leaving out. It's extremely clear this is CNN just trying to goose ratings. And you know what, mission accomplished. But let's not pretend this isn't what this was.
And the other context is that there has been research showing that Trump basically got a billion dollars of free advertising from cable news and news in general because he was "ratings gold". Like I generally agree that it wasn't some sort of disaster that there was this townhall. If anything, he gave the Biden team a ton of fodder here. Including that he sort of kind of said he supports a full abortion ban, which is a different tune then he was singing even a few months ago. But I think the worry is we're going to have another election season of cable news broadcasting empty lecterns for an hour and giving Trump all sorts of free advertising.
Why does that matter? In some sense the reason all news sources do anything is profit.
Sure, maybe the individual journalists do things for other motives (and no reason to think they might not have been doing that here) but all the big decisions (do we cover politics, do we have a style section etc) are always about profit.
Doesn't change whether or not it's a good thing for society.
It matters because the premise of the article was that CNN was performing useful journalism.
My point is that they were trying to exploit Trump (again) for ratings. IF they committed journalism, it was by accident.
But having a profit motive doesn't say anything about whether they were doing useful journalism. I mean, the choice by the NYT or MSNBC to fund investigative journalism at all or to put Maddow on the air is all driven by profit. Doesn't mean they don't do any useful journalism.
It's always the case that the ultimate shareholders are profit motivated and the social value is mostly an accident.
"The complaints are that Trump lies too much, and therefore broadcasting him live will tend to misinform voters; or that he is too vicious and nasty; or that the audience is too vicious and nasty, cheering him on and making his shtick look popular and effective."
I don't know that I disagree with your final conclusion, but I think this a little dismissive of the biggest concern about Trump - his repeated attempts to stoke political violence and erode our democracy. Should a news outlet put a major political party nominee live on air if they repeatedly lie and are nasty? Yes. Should a news outlet put a major political party nominee live on air if they have repeatedly urged violence and taken steps to unjustly install themselves as president? That's a different question that I don't think you really reckon with here.
It depends on what the effect of putting them on air is.
In Trump's case there isn't any option that denies him a massive platform to communicate with his base. All you can do by denying him coverage at this point is help him sell his narrative that all these elite institutions are against his supporters and thus help him convince them we need to tear it all down.
I think you are basically correct but I despair of any progress.
Trump's secret sauce is his ability to bait mainstream media into what seem like partisan attacks so he can then tell his base: see I told you they were against you the whole time.
But I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Journalists aren't robots and when Trump personally treats them badly or disrespects their role it requires near superhuman restraint not to hit back.
On top of this add the economic incentives. Nuetral, non-partisan reporting offers incredible societal value. But it's just not what drives clicks or viewers. Absent a public funding model like the BBC I don't see how you avoid this.
My experience online is that the easiest way to get everyone furious at you is to recognize the flaws in both sides arguments. For instance, point out that Trump and his lawyers posed a serious threat to our democratic system with their attempt to deny certification but that it would be a stretch to say that Trump's speech on January 6th triggered the 14th amendment's bar on holding office and everyone hates you.
There’s always the solution of just not watching. I’m sure if I had watched I would have had to turn it off because I would have gotten frustrated. Instead I went to a brewery with friends. Much better choice!
I think this is correct. I’m just nervous Trump could win. I think a lot of people are, and that’s why they were outraged. But the key truth is this: If after all the scandals and corruption the American people vote Trump back in and want to go to hell, then so be it. That would be utterly tragic, sad, and maybe the end of democracy, but there would be nobody to blame ultimately than the voters who put him there.
The format (to say nothing of the audience) mitigated any possibility for a substantive discussion. If you compare what happened last night to Jonathan Swan‘s interview from a few years back, it’s just night and day.
A lot of the commentary about the town hall format is looking at the problem backwards. The root problem is the audience, not the candidate; that is, the electorate itself is becoming more polarized and spending more time in paranoia-inducing filter bubbles. Certainly, you can always stitch together an audience of lunatics, but these days if you scoop up a randomized handfull of Republican primary voters, most of them will act the way this audience did because they are taking cues from all the podcasts, online discussions, talking heads, etc. that comprise the modern right-wing media. And, ultimately, these are the people who give demagogues like Trump power. Have we already forgotten town hall in which McCain had to correct the assertion of an audience member that Obama was Muslim and that being Muslim is somehow disqualifying? Does it make more sense to be mad at Trump for prompting laughter at a women he sexually assaulted or for the audience having laughed at all? We know from his rallies that the former happened because of the latter.
It is easier for me to dissemble my concerns for the mirror problem with Democratic primaries because I'm left of center, but I imagine that if you scoop up a randomized handfull of Democratic primary voters, you'll get a good cross-section of people who think California should bankrupt itself paying reparations and that we should stop having children in order to save the environment. So I tend to agree with Josh that the town hall was useful and appropriate, but only because it affords an opportunity for sane, middle-of-the-road voters to see how crazy primary voters have become.
PS I live in a purple congressional district (that is soon to be gerrymandered out of existence) where the primary process produced a left-wing social justice warrior and a far-right MAGA nut. We ended up with the former only because of a technical objection to the residency of the latter by the local GOP. So I am probably biased by the trauma of watching that process play out.
Many good points. Would CNN typically give individual candidates such town halls, though? Or were the other Republican candidates invited but declined?
They did a zillion of these in 2020 and I'm sure there will be more with the other candidates in the coming months. Importantly, many of the likely candidates, including Ron DeSantis, have not yet declared.
It would be bad if the number were 1 rather than 0. I think it would be better if the number were 0 rather than a zillion. Just seems like a fundamentally flawed concept (although as you note, it's not CNN's fault to baby the process along until DeSantis or some other challenger formally appears).
Thanks for the reply. That does seem perfectly reasonable then.
That was my thought as well.
If you have the whole primary field present, they act as a check on each other, including by splitting the parties' voters among them.
I thought this did not work without those two factors present. This was just Trump playing to an adoring crowd, and united with them against the ineffectual hall monitor/moderator.
If I think back to big, single-candidate events, I think the networks have traditionally presented a one-on-one interview. With good reason, in my view, as I think that would have been more effective and avoided the valid complaints here.
Completely agree. I also think trying to censor Trump feeds into the narrative of election rigging and media unfairness. Let Trump spill his nonsense from the mountaintops- last night he literally called anyone who didn’t think the election was rigged an “idiot”- and let’s see how it goes for him.
I think it was embarrassing to Trump and the GOP in general because while they think anytime he pisses off "liberals" it means they are "winning". It shows a constant reminder of just how terrible he is as a candidate, leader and person.
Additionally, by stating his unpopular and incoherent policy views or general disregard for America (e.g. abortion access for women is a negotiation chip, or since he's not president he doesn't care if we default on the debt ceiling, called the moderator a nasty woman, also he defamed Carroll again, etc...), I think it makes him look less electable, since most moderates want to move on from him too. The main issue I think most have is that a town hall like that shouldn't feel like a rally and that's what it sort of turned into. Although that is expected of any and all Trump events.
That said we can't likely ignore that Trump is such a dumpster fire that is good for ratings that CNN probably is doing it's business a disservice by not covering him. On the other hand for Democrats he constantly gives you new material for why he is a bad candidate. I do think the media did a better job last night on asking him tough questions as opposed to 6 years ago when they normalized a lot of his terrible behavior. That's just my 2 cents, however.
Not enough moderates to sway the nomination process.
democrat support of weak republican candidates worked in 2022.
Seems plausible in 2024.
trump gets nominated.
Biden-Harris wins.
or, Trump wins narrowly in the EC with a big minority of the votes
I touched on this somewhat in another comment. But isn't the person who should be most upset by this Ron DeSantis*? As loathe as I am to give him any benefit of the doubt, I think his team can rightfully say the MSM is trying to boost Trump because he's good for ratings at the expense of other viable GOP candidates.
And I'll repeat something I said in another comment. As much as I'm less angry about this townhall being aired then other Progressives (And will note again that Trump actually gave Democrats a ton of attack ad fodder; especially in regard to abortion), I'm as worried as anyone that we're heading down the 2016 road again; hours of footage of empty lecterns, broadcasting his rallies in full, broadcasting his press conferences in full because he'll say something completely insane and that's great ratings. All the while essentially getting free airtime to advertise himself and his message thereby giving him a huge leg up in reaching primary voters and swing voters (even if swing voters aren't watching cable, the amount of coverage it gets means they are liking hearing about it in some manner; whether that's social media, friends or recaps on the local news).
*Tim Scott and Nikki Haley could also be counted as being rightfully aggrieved. But while in theory they are actually probably two of the best general election candidates GOP could put up, let's be real; the chances of either being viable are slim to none unless Trump keels over from too many cheeseburgers.
Useful to get Trump nominated FFS?
Yeah, great work.
I love this article. Ultimately, Trump is news. He should be treated as such, and given the same attention (not more, not less) than any other candidate would be who is the front runner at this stage in a primary.