Speaker 1: All right. So the big media story over the last 48 hours was Wednesday
night's CNN town hall of the failed former President Donald Trump. On yesterday's show,
we did an extensive review of what was said. The audience's roll and reactions,
laughing and cheering at the most depraved, anti-democratic and dishonest moments. Anchor
Kaitlan Collins is respectable attempt to do some fact checking up against the unfortunate reality
that Trump mostly steamrolled right over her. Had the crowd on his side for the lies and that the
environment in some total didn't really conform to one where serious fact checking and pinning Trump
down could happen in part because of the crowd and because of the format and so many other things.
So we then heard again on yesterday's show from people in the media, Joe Scarborough and others,
members of the House and Senate. We heard from all sorts of different people about the town
hall and we heard from voters as well. And in a focus group that CNN did of Trump supporters,
they were not more impressed or less impressed by Trump based on the town hall. It did nothing one
way or the other to influence their opinion of Trump. And then the question becomes, well, what
about independent voters? What about Democrats? What about non-Trump Republicans? And it's hard
to imagine that they were overly thrilled by what took place. So now there is a media question.
What happens with CNN after this insane town hall. We know that based on the new,
relatively new leadership of CNN by Chris Licht, that there is a change of direction happening
that's already happened. The network has hired a number of Republican former Republican officials
and so on to to be on the network. But Chris Licht did tell Kara Swisher during an interview back in
November that CNN is not going to become the Trump news Network. This was the current head of CNN,
Chris Licht, speaking with Kara Swisher. Speaker 2: You ended up talking about him
for 8 hours a day. And we're not going to do that. We're going to be very
clear and take everything on a case by case basis about what level of
coverage it should be. Speaker 3: So meaning
that it will not be quite hand-waving. Speaker 2: We are not going to be a 24
seven Trump news network. Speaker 1: Okay.
Is that what they are sticking to or is it not? And to be clear, Trump is a former president
in the completely unprecedented situation where he is under criminal indictment, was recently found
liable civilly for sexual assault and defamation, tried to hang on to power despite having lost. On
and on and on all these different things. So it makes sense that corporate media talks about the
guy. It makes sense. But the question is, what is the sort of tone and tenor of that coverage? Is it
sycophantic? Is it what what exactly is it going to be? Now, just as interestingly, in the 48 hours
since the Trump town hall, during which Chris Licht defended what CNN did, there has been some,
I guess we could call it lite rebellion coming from within. Within CNN, There's an interesting
article on Semaphore. America was served very well by what we did last night. CNN chairman Defends
Town Hall. But there are others who are quoted here. The view from CNN staff is that it may not
be particularly the best thing. And they point out that they don't love the fact that the audience
was filled with Trump supporters. CNN's senior media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote, It's hard to
see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.
And Licht said, I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served well. So there's
a couple of different questions here. Question one is what actually happens on CNN as far as
Trump coverage goes? Does it become friendlier than maybe what we saw in 2016 and 2020? I don't
know. That's certainly one question. The other aspect to this is what about disaffected Fox
News viewers? Because that's part of the timing of this entire thing. Trump has increasingly
turned against Fox News over the last year. Now, with the firing of Tucker Carlson, there is a
significant contingent of MAGA people who they may be watching Fox News now reluctantly, or they may
have abandoned Fox News and they want a new home. Does Chris Licht want to appeal to those people?
And does he want to try to make the new home for those folks? CNN And can he do that in any
way that is even remotely responsible as far as journalism is concerned? Or can you really only
appeal to those people by becoming overtly sycophantic and brown nosing about Donald
Trump? A lot of questions in this segment. Not a ton of answers. We simply have to wait and see.
But it's not looking particularly inspiring. I think that's where we can leave it for today.