Speaker 1: All right.
Was the Trump CNN town hall the most corrosive television event in political history?
Depends who you ask.
For example, Republican Congressman Byron Donalds was actually reinvigorated into continuing
to not answer the simple question did Trump win in 2020 or did he lose?
Trump setting the tone during the town hall that he's insisting he won.
Byron Donalds asked about it.
He will not acknowledge nearly three years later that Trump simply lost that day.
This is one of the reasons why these events are so corrosive.
Listen to this oversight committee.
Speaker 2: Can I just say are the facts?
You do acknowledge Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, correct?
Speaker 4: Again, we're going to continue to talk about 2018 at home.
You want me tell you let me tell you why most voters are frankly kind of tired of y'all
bringing this up.
Inflation, water.
You don't have the courage to express your memory about Republican voters.
Speaker 2: I'm a Republican voter.
Speaker 4: Just want to talk about inflation, the border Fed and all the debt ceiling foreign
policy.
If you want to talk about the 2020 election, let's talk about this.
We do know that Marc Elias was in many jurisdictions suing to actually change election procedures,
which, by the way, is at the hands of the state legislature in every state, according
to the Constitution, not in the hands of courts, not in the hands of the Supreme Court, the
state legislature.
We do know that to be a fact.
We do know that.
True won't state your opinion about actually factually what happened in the 2020.
Guys want me to make a stick.
And Frank, let me tell you right now, this.
Speaker 1: This is not a trick question.
They act like it's a trick question.
It's just, okay, fine.
You want Trump to have won.
You want him to win in 2024.
You think Biden's bad?
But can we just start with Biden did win.
Can we start there?
They refuse.
Joe Scarborough from MSNBC just this morning had actually a pretty good take about the
impact of this town hall.
Speaker 4: No surprises.
And yet it was just it was a disgraceful performance.
Yes.
I'm constantly telling people not to catastrophize over Trump that he's actually going to lose.
Speaker 1: This is a former Republican member of Congress, by the way.
Speaker 4: Because he keeps drilling down deeper and deeper into his base.
But it is it is.
I can't believe I'm I'm going to use catastrophizing language here.
But it was it was just it was disgraceful on every level.
Yeah, it showed.
I wouldn't say it's dangerous for democracy because we passed that a long time ago, but
it showed the corrosive effects of Trumpism over eight years.
And I've got to say.
I The most shocking part was an audience who cheered on a president who tried to overturn.
American democracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Joe Scarborough is completely right.
Now, a practical question becomes, did Trump convince anybody one way or the other?
We'll get to Van Jones, his take on what it did to Democrats.
But they actually had a focus group on CNN with a group of Trump supporters.
And you may or may not be interested to hear that it didn't affect any of them one way
or the other.
Trump spending that time just lying and lying and lying, it just had no impact one way or
the other vote.
Speaker 4: But that's what they have in common, that most of them are Trump supporters.
What I want to ask you, first of all, is do you think a show of hands anybody think Donald
Trump looks better after this town hall?
And if you think he looks worse, know him.
Do you think the same thing about him as you did when you walked in there?
Speaker 1: So on Trump supporters, it had no impact whatsoever.
What about on Democrats?
Well, Van Jones says if you watch this and you're a Democrat, you're probably feeling
a lot better about Joe Biden all of a sudden.
Speaker 4: I think if you're a Democrat watching that, you you think we've been criticizing
and complaining about Biden.
This is a horror show that we don't want a rerun of.
And I think a lot of Democrats were appalled by his behavior and throwing Ukraine under
the bus.
You know, I hope he gets sued again this morning for for libel and slander and everything else.
He's being so horrible, you know, toward the people who have been on their side of his
legal cases.
But, you know, I think that we've got to be careful here now, because Trump has a particular
trick that he uses with nostalgia.
The whole Make America Great Again is about the was this era that was wonderful.
Was 19.
Yeah.
Speaker 1: Which we've talked about before.
So, listen, I think the best case scenario, as atrocious and disgusting as the event was
on the merits, the hope is Trump supporters still support him.
Other Republicans were maybe appalled.
And of course, Democrats may be appalled enough that now they are more interested in coming
out to vote in 2024 against Trump if he is indeed the nominee.
It's still a while to go, but let's hope that's
the outcome.