With Fox News' ratings having cratered in the aftermath of Tucker Carlson moving on, prog networks like CNN and MSNBC sense there's proverbial blood in the water. As such, CNN is pivoting back to the one thing that served as its ratings elixir.
Former President Donald Trump will participate in a CNN presidential town hall next week in New Hampshire, the network announced Monday.
“CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event at St. Anselm College, which will air at 8 p.m. ET on May 10 and will feature the former president taking questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
This will be Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 presidential campaign.
Sure, Trump hasn't personally appeared on the network in seven years, but people tuned in during his presidency as some sort of therapy session. In essence, CNN's ratings went up in the Trump years because the anti-Trump crowd wanted their maniacal thoughts validated. And while I concede that an American news network should be provide thorough coverage of the President of the United States, CNN took it to another absurd level. Whether it was tracking Trump's ice cream and Diet Coke consumption or selectively editing video in an attempt to put him in an unflattering light, CNN went balls to the wall knowing there was a huge market for Trump derangement.
For as much as CNN personalities clutched their pearls over Trump's blatant lack of decorum or perpetuating a "big lie, " the network brass knows what's good for business. National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke spells it out.
At the New Republic (Tuesday), Prem Thakker complains that the show’s renewal represents “proof” that CNN has “learned nothing from 2016.” In fact, the opposite is true: It demonstrates that the network has learned the lessons of 2016 perfectly. Those lessons, in no particular order, are that it is extremely profitable for CNN to pretend that it hates Donald Trump; that it is equally profitable for Donald Trump to pretend that he hates CNN; and that, if Trump ends up in the White House in consequence, the ratings will be terrific for all involved.
Thakker also complains that CNN is “giving open air to a man who warrants none of it.” But this approach is very 2021, is it not? As we all have learned repeatedly over the last few years, media ethics are entirely contextual. When the press wishes to prioritize a given story without being criticized for doing so, it insists that it has no choice but to cover it because it’s “newsworthy.” When the press does not wish to cover a story at all, it resorts to Talmudic, po-faced discussions of “systems” and “disinformation” and “platforming” and so forth. CNN devoutly wishes to get back into bed with Donald Trump, and, as a result, doing so will be deemed to be justified by the loftiest of journalistic ideals.
Now that Trump has soured on Fox News, what are the odds he'll utter sentiments along the lines of CNN being a better news outlet than FNC? It wouldn't be all that different than his suggestion that Democrat gubernatorial candidates Stacey Abrams (GA) and Charlie Crist (FL) might be preferable to respective GOP incumbents (and those whom he's deemed disloyal) Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis. And since they have no principles, the "always Trump" simps will drink it all in.
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