Last week CNN aired a town hall with Donald Trump, the twice-impeached leader of a seditionist conspiracy who was recently found liable for rape and defamation, and is currently being investigated for a multitude of crimes, including financial and tax fraud, hush money payments, hoarding classified materials, election interference, and plotting a violent coup.
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The town hall was broadly disparaged as an infomercial for Trump’s aspirations to return to the White House in 2024. He was given wide latitude to lie, with only paltry pushback by the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. The audience was stacked with Trump supporters who applauded his most heinous remarks and laughed when he insulted the victim of his sexual assault. The program was so awful that many insiders at CNN were among the harshest critics…
SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It
In the days following the town hall, CNN’s ratings plummeted to fourth place, below the ultra-rightist gadfly network, Newsmax. So naturally, this week CNN is rewarding Collins for her hosting of the debacle with a new primetime show:
“On the heels of her performance moderating a town hall with former President Donald Trump, CNN CEO Chris Licht named Kaitlan Collins the new host of the network’s 9 p.m. hour starting in June.”
This schedule change was actually rumored to be in the works prior to the town hall, which was to serve as both an introduction and an advertisement for Collins in her new role. Which, in retrospect, doesn’t seem like it was a very good idea.
CNN appears to be making good on the journalistically inappropriate promise of its CEO, Chris Licht, to make the network “more Republican friendly.” They are replacing the more left-leaning journalist, Don Lemon, with Collins, a former correspondent with the Tucker Carlson founded “Daily Caller.” Never mind that Collins’ primetime debut has garnered mostly criticism and ridicule. One of the few people to praise the show was Trump himself (of course), who credited it with moving Fox News more to the right.
REALTED: Ratings Envy? Trump Says that His CNN Town Hall Spurred Fox News to Cover His Iowa Cult Rally
Perhaps Licht thinks that he can scoop up the disaffected Fox News viewers who are rapidly abandoning the network for having fired their High Priest of White Nationalism, Tucker Carlson. If so, then Licht is even dumber than Carlson looks. Fox’s audience has been trained to despise CNN, and they won’t be de-programmed by a one-night special broadcast.
As for Fox News, they are implementing some program changes as well. They just announced that Sean Hannity will be moved into Carlson’s earlier timeslot. And insiders are saying that Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld are also going to be given shows in primetime.
This presents a dilemma for Fox. There aren’t enough hours in primetime for everyone currently being talked about to have a show there. Since Hannity isn’t going anywhere, if Watters and Gutfeld get promoted, then Laura Ingraham is either fired or moved out of primetime.
All of these changes are going to inject some chaos into the cable news wars. CNN is driving viewers away by sucking up to the right. Fox News is alienating their followers by terminating their heroes. And all of that is going to create opportunities for MSNBC, whose schedule is remaining relatively stable.
It may take several weeks for all of this to shake out. But if CNN and Fox News continue to battle it out for the wingnut demographic, they will both continue to lose audience share to MSNBC and the various incarnations of “Bachelors” and “Idols” that are being served up on the broadcast networks. Stay tuned.
SEE ALSO: Trump Spills that CNN Made Him ‘a Deal I Couldn’t Refuse’ to Get Him to Do Their Town Hall
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The entire Promo for Trumpf (R) on CNN proved how many people are stupid, in CNN Management. The “new” CEO is a Trumpf (R) fluffer, with no regard for Honesty in Journalism, an alleged concern for Media. He is a Paid lackey for Trumpf (R), nothing at all more. The person interviewing the huuuge Liar, with no intelligent questions for Trumpf (R) to offset his lies, utterly failed yet is being rewarded. CNN did lose any credibility, it believed it had. Bowing down Rupert Murdoch was clear, by CNN.
I can’t figure out why CNN would want the rightwing audience, ex-FUX or not. That demographic is not particularly affluent, so advertisers aren’t going to be overly enthusiastic about it.
I will have to add CNN to the list of news channels that I will never watch!
I still say that it is high time for all media to stop giving that SOB so much air time!
I feel EXACTLY the same way, David, all that SOB TUMP ever does is blab the same old crap about stolen elections, witch hunt, rigged elections… that’s all that ignorant baboon knows how to rant about. I don’t watch any of these right wing reactionary TV networks such as, CNN, Fox Spews, Spewsmax, or OANN.
Chris Licht giving Trump a CNN town hall hosted by Kaitlan Collins is analogous to House Speaker McCarthy giving Tucker Carlson tapes of the insurrection. All of this to promote the lies of Trump In addition, cheapening the good journalists of CNN-Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, and all the rest of them.