In a recent profile on CNN's new headC hris Licht, they get into a discussion
about CNN making some decisions that were curious to say the least.
Now Chris Licht kind of wants to move away from aggressively criticizing
Donald Trump all the time.
He wants to bring CNN to a more centrist role.
And as a result, he has made some decisions that he himself will admit were
were poor decisions to say the least.
We're going to get to the Trump Town Hall in a moment, but before we do,
I thought that this excerpt from the piece was telling.
A few weeks into Chris Licht's tenure, Licht instructed his
producers to downplay the first hearing of the January 6 Committee,
an event that MSNBC treated like a prime time special,
earning monster ratings that infuriated the CNN staff.
Licht expressed regret to some top editorial personnel
the day after the hearing.
Now look, I get that most of the emphasis is on the need for ratings, ratings,
ratings, ratings.
MSNBC did so well with ratings because they decided to cover it,
but let's keep it real.
Donald Trump attempting to overturn the results of our democratic
process was a serious act, and his involvement was very obvious and
a lot of Americans on the right didn't believe it.
Those hearings I honestly didn't think they were gonna be great,
I didn't have much faith in them.
But they were revealing, they were interesting,
I learned a lot by watching the hearings.
Deciding against covering the hearings is weird to me to say the least.
>> Yes, so look, some parts of the piece I thought,
they're trying to do this false equivalency, false balance, etc.
And some parts I thought, no, they're just right wingers.
>> Yeah, totally, I felt the same way, yeah.
>> And this is one of those moments.
And remember, Licht is a proxy for Zazlov who actually runs the bigger company,
Discovery Warner.
And Zazlovin is in some ways a proxy for John Malone,
who's the biggest shareholder.
Now John Malone is very much a Republican,
Zazlov certainly appears to be a Republican with everything he says.
And it appears from this piece that Zazlov is constantly calling Licht and
making him go further and further towards the right wing and towards Republicans.
So in this instance, though, it didn't seem like a mistake in false equivalency.
It seemed like an active decision to go towards Trump and the Republicans.
Speaking of Trump, the piece also shed some light on what was happening behind
the scenes both prior to and after Trump's town hall, the one where
Caitlin Collins was steamrolled by Trump that led to a lot of controversy.
According to the piece, Licht had come to view the primetime town hall event with
Trump as the moment that would vindicate his pursuit of Republican viewers
while proving to his employees that he possessed a revolutionary vision for
their network and the broader news media.
Trump had other ideas, and I think we saw that happen in real time.
So Trump was the heroic brawler, loathed by the establishment,
loved by the masses, trying to reclaim a title wrongfully taken from him,
while Collins, standing in for the villainous elites who dared to
question the protagonist virtue, was cast as the heel.
Now that was the perspective of the very Republican voters
that Chris Licht was trying to persuade to come watch CNN like it's a new CNN.
We're gonna be far friendlier to you, far fairer to you, so
get a load of this town hall that we're doing with Donald Trump.
But the way the town hall was conducted, the way it all came out,
actually ended up reinforcing what right wing voters already felt about CNN.
Because of course Caitlin Collins to her credit was trying to
do her job in real time by fact checking him.
And simply by fact checking him,
Republican voters felt, you see that establishment media working against Trump,
working against the right wing, that's how it came across.
>> Again, every assumption here is wrong, okay?
Because they say,
you either have to challenge Trump even more aggressively, but to be fair to her,
I don't know that she could have been any more aggressive than she was.
That wouldn't have solved it.
The other option is, hey, we should never allow Trump on television.
Who are you kidding?
He's running for president, he's the leading candidate on the Republican side,
he's a former president.
I mean, saying we shouldn't platform him on giant stations like CNN is
basically saying, no, we're gonna do censorship of the Republican nominee.
That's insane, you can't do that, right?
Now I know that tons and tons of people are used to how in my opinion corrupt
media is, so they don't find that to be an outrageous thing to say at all.
They're like, what do you mean?
Let's do what we do with progressives, just ban them, never allow them on air,
and that problem is solved.
The problem is not solved, the anger grows and grows and grows.
There is a correct answer, it's the one they never consider,
you should have Trump's Town Hall.
And yeah,
it's a Republican audience that's because he's running in the Republican primary.
And then you should have town halls with many other people.
And when you have it with a corporate Democrat like Joe Biden,
you should be super aggressive in questioning him,
how come you said the public option but never propose it?
How come you said the $15 minimum wage but
then had the two Delaware senators vote against it?
You could challenge Biden just as aggressively, but
they would never do that.
>> Now CNN just had a town hall with Nikki Haley, noticed that it didn't get as much
attention not even close to the town hall that was held with Donald Trump.
But it does seem that CNN is going to have more of these town halls moving forward.
So I wanted to kind of give credit for that.
But I do think that the line of questioning is very important, right?
And so are they going to be as aggressive with all the other candidates,
including the Democratic candidates, should they have town halls with them?
We'll see.
>> One more quick thing about that.
Look, they keep talking about putting on jerseys not putting on jerseys, but based
on whether you're asking a tough question of Donald Trump or letting him slide.
No, you put on a jersey when you say no, progressives are allowed,
only corporate politicians are allowed.
Okay, so where's Marianne Williamson's Town Hall?
So right now, she's the only progressive in the race, right?
So I'm not saying you got to vote for Marianne Williamson, but
should we not hear her out?
>> I wanna hear out.
>> Yeah, so where's her town hall?
Because they think like, no, we're not gonna do town halls of people we consider
to be outsiders, no, only insiders.
And then Trump's an outsider, but he was president, so
that makes him an insider by definition.
Machine broken, does not compute, and that's why we're in this mess.
>> And remember Licht wants to attract Republican viewers.
Trump is the head of the Republican Party which is why that was the first town hall
they did.
And in the aftermath of that town hall, Licht knew this was bad, very, very bad.
Republicans were angry at CNN, Democrats were angry at CNN,
journalists were angry at CNN.
The only one who wasn't angry it seemed was Trump, most likely because he'd
succeeded in disgracing the network on its own airwaves.
>> I shed no tear about that.
They should be disgraced not by Trump but
by the fact that they are in favor of the status quo.
They take corporate positions and then call them objective.
They are fundamentally deceptive in their so
called news gathering and and presentations.
So if they actually did the actual news, then I'm on their side and let's go and
let's challenge everybody at once, okay?
But they don't do that, so they should be embarrassed.