Donald Trump is obviously claiming victory coming
out of his town hall and even kind of defending CNN.
He bleeded people are criticizing CNN for giving me a capital F forum.
To tell the truth, I believe it was a very smart thing that they did with sky high
ratings that they haven't seen in a very long time.
It was by far the biggest capital S show of the night, the week and the month.
It was the most watched program on cable news.
Yes, that day.
So that's fair.
It got 3.1 million viewers, which in the context of cable news is good.
What's particularly good for CNN, I don't know if that's particularly good for
Fox for some of their shows.
It wasn't the ratings draw that some of the Trump debates or
town halls were back in 2016, but it is still early.
Maybe if they do this again in six months, which they will,
maybe it'll do better then, I don't know.
He went on to say, the radical left scream, take it down,
take it down during the show because they saw that I was making so
many important points on the border.
Energy independence, the Afghanistan catastrophe, inflation, the economy,
which he wants them to default on, the debt, Russia, Ukraine.
Which I won't say who should win, who's to say?
Many minds were changed on Wednesday night by listening to common sense and
sheer in quotation marks, brilliance.
If he's going to refer to his own speech as brilliance,
I do appreciate him putting quotation marks around it.
Brett what do you think?
>> So I'm seeing that Tucker Carlson was getting about
3 million viewers as the highest rated show in cable news.
>> So this is good for CNN then?
>> I don't know.
Everything is in realignment in America right now.
I don't know where it's gonna shake out.
CNN has a lot of headwinds, and I don't think what they're doing now is
particularly beneficial because they were always the ones that tried to appeal,
to quote both sides, they never really took a firm stance one way or
another, and that's what they had going against them in a news
environment that reinforces partisanship.
So they were always up a creek in their decision making, and
it's just similar to how their rules were.
They're just making a lot of decisions that aren't
actually solving the problem they have.
They're just making decisions to they're losing.
They lost to Trump.
Trump's going to say nice things about them because they just did something that
was beneficial to him.
He reinforces that behavior, but don't confuse that with loyalty or friendliness.
He's going to give you positive reinforcement so
long as you're helping him and negative reinforcement as long as you're not.
Because when he was on that stage, he was disrespecting CNN.
He was disrespecting the former Daily Caller reporter Caitlin Collins,
who's been on Fox News, to say that George Soros is a foreign born
communist who's trying to change our lives and have open borders.
And they gave him a former Daily Caller reporter, and
he still treated her like trash and walked right over him.
And that is how Donald Trump won the primary in 2016.
He went to all the people who are like, you can't do this.
This is CNN.
And he said, watch me now.
He got everything he wanted.
>> Totally. He totally did.
And I really do think he will.
If what they wanted was for the ratings, but then also for these conversations to
be happening, I suppose I think they're still worth having.
But if that's what they wanted, then they got what they wanted.
So they're almost certainly going to do it again.
I would imagine the first is going to be the most successful, but I could be wrong.
I think that we could still very much be in a lull where some people are tapped
out of politics from the last election.
They're taking some time off, and they'll eventually reengage.
That is possible.
>> If I was at CNN, I would do the next one with Donald Trump and,
like, someone he could just smack the crap out of, just like an AC.
A what?
>> Maybe a DeSantis honestly.
>> No, don't do a DeSantis.
You keep that.
The next one is slight.
Like, people are going to get tired of just having Trump go up.
It's gonna be the same thing because he says the same thing every time he's there.
You need to give him a different format that's still friendly to him for
him to show up and agree to go up against someone who's running against him or
had he or get, like, Marianne Williamson on there, if I was him,
be like, hey, I'll debate the people that Biden's afraid to debate.
>> That's a clever framing.
I would watch that.
I wouldn't mind seeing that.
In any event, look, if you are one of the people working at CNN,
if you theoretically didn't want this to happen,
then I guess this puts you in a little bit of a tough patch.
But also, it's CNN.
How surprised can you actually be?
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