The New York democratic-socialist congresscritter known as AOC fumed on Twitter Wednesday night that CNN “set up a sexual assault victim to be targeted and attacked” by inviting Donald Trump to appear on a special town hall segment that evening. “People were sounding the alarm about this exact scenario,” she continued. “They let it happen anyway without a plan.”
“This, the choice to platform election disinformation, lies about January 6th, totally unchecked and reckless claims about abortion… they need to take ownership of what just happened.”
AOC said that CNN allowing Trump on the air “cannot be normalized. It’s dangerous.”
I love the sound of leftist cries in the morning; it sounds like victory.
PJ Media’s own Paula Bolyard wrote the wrap-up on Trump’s appearance, in which he doubled down on the 2020 election having been stolen, defended his actions on January 6, and said that Jean Carroll’s civil suit against him was really about the 2024 election.
None of this stuff “targeted and attacked” any rape victim or is outside the realm of normal political discourse.
Nevertheless, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called the town hall “disgraceful on every level.”
CNN's town hall with Trump "was just disgraceful on every level," @JoeNBC says.
"The most shocking part" was seeing an audience "lapping it up."
"What I saw last night was as chilling as anything I've seen on television since January the 6th." pic.twitter.com/StpTk1TtUU
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 11, 2023
Hell, Scarborough’s comments made me think he was talking about one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies — and in his mind, he probably was. Needless to say, it was low-ratings mogul Brian Stelter who was lapping up Scarborough’s comments. Stelter was last seen just yesterday having a meltdown over Tucker Carlson moving his show to Twitter. So we have that going for us. Which is nice.
Tim Miller — who writes for The Bulwark, a website assembled out of parts taken from the rotting corpse of The Weekly Standard — wrote that the event glorified “a political leader who has probably glorified violence against our American institutions.”
There’s some confusion over whether CNN cut short Trump’s appearance by 20 minutes or more, or whether the struggling network ran the show as planned. CNN told Newsweek that they announced days ago the town hall would last “roughly an hour” with “a little room to bleed over,” which seems to be what happened.
There was, however, one spot-on take — and it was from CNN’s own focus group of GOP and independent voters who watched the event remotely:
CNN: Does it bother you that Trump keeps talking abt 2020 and not 2024?
Voter: You guys asked him the first Q at the town hall abt the 2020 election.
CNN: Well couldn’t he talk abt 2024?
Voter: Couldn’t the media ask him abt 2024?
CNN: You’re right.
— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) May 11, 2023
Elections are about looking forward, not back. CNN and the Left (but I repeat myself) are hoping for a repeat of 2020. Using a combination of means legal and (ahem) otherwise, they were able to put one fat thumb on the scale for Joe Biden. Having done it once, they believe they can do it again.
That’s why they’re talking so much about 2020, and why I wish Trump would work harder to change the subject.
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