Why CNN’s Trump Town Hall Was a Disgrace — And an Insult to Democracy

That Was a Poisonous Taste of Authoritarianism — When the Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

Image Credit: MwanzoTV via PBS

Everyone sane warned: this is a bad, bad idea. And somehow, it turned out to be hellishly worse than that. CNN’s “Town Hall,” with Donald Trump. Did you watch it? By now, you’ve surely heard about the fallout. To say people are angry, revolted, horrified, and disgusted would be an understatement. It was an event that will live in infamy, as it should — because what sane minds feared was exactly what happened. Democracy — that most fragile and precious of gifts — was eviscerated, in a public, ritual slaughter.

Maybe you think I exaggerate, so let’s recount what did actually happen. From the very first moment, Trump began to do what he does best. Tell Big Lies. The election was stolen. Jan 6th didn’t really happen. On and on they went. He trampled Kaitlan Collins, who could barely get a word in edgewise, so fast and hard did the lies come. But then? It got so, so much worse. Trump began making fun of his…sexual assault victim. The audience laughed. He went right back to open bigotry. The audience cheered. He attacked Collins, snarling that she was a nasty woman. The audience laughed and cheered.

What was even happening here? A lot of things — and none of them were good.

This wasn’t a “Town Hall.” It was a rally. It wasn’t journalistic investigation — it was staged electioneering. This was Trump basically announcing his run for President, letting his base know he’s back in business, with a Big Bang. And CNN gave him the platform to do it. To hold an election rally. A staged one. Staged because the audience was all…Republicans. And the kinds of “independents” who were college Republicans asking questions like: are guns really so bad? This was a charade, in other words, and it was transparent from the very first moment. A staged election rally. And normally? Those have to be held, organized, funded, coordinated by a campaign. This was a gift from CNN.

But even that barely scratches the surface of what really happened last night, why it’s so egregious, so disturbing, and so dangerous.

The casual interpretation goes: “CNN gave Trump a platform to lie again, sigh.” But that underplays what happened here by a country mile. They didn’t just give him a platform. They gave him an audience. They gave him a 31 year old interviewer without anywhere near the experience, gravitas, or practical knowledge to really combat him — a lamb to the slaughter. And they gave him, worst of all, legitimacy. The legitimacy of their own brand — which might be a joke to you and me, people who read books and maybe even a foreign newspaper now and then. But to the average American? Especially the MAGA die-hard? This was a seal of approval.

So CNN did something horrific. It legitimized Trump’s Big Lies. You see, to invite a demagogue onto your space, let him open his mouth, spew all kinds of disinformation and misinformation — and then try to “fact check” him while the audience laughs at the poor innocent who’s being trampled by said Big Lies? That’s not remotely journalism. So what is it?

Maybe you know what a Potemkin village is. If you don’t: 

The concept of the “Potemkin Village” can be traced back to Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin, a Russian field marshal and favorite of Empress Catherine the Great. Anxious to spare her the grim face of the recently annexed Crimea when she toured it in 1787, he allegedly ordered to create entire “villages” consisting of nothing more than gaily painted façades to be erected all along her route.

In other words: a facade, a showy and loud one, designed to deceive — the fact of a shabby, empty shell of an interior.

Potemkin villages are notorious shadow institutions. In authoritarian regimes, they proliferate. Quick, the dictator’s coming! Somebody clean the streets and paint the buildings and tell everyone to smile, or else. You’ve heard stories like that, I’m sure.

This was the media equivalent of a Potemkin village. It was a construct, designed to look like journalism, but serve as its diametrical and polar opposite. And in that way, it’s precisely the kind of institution that warns us a society’s in danger of authoritarianism. 

Let’s go back to what actually happened, to explain that a little better. By 20 minutes or so into this fiasco, the audience was laughing, regularly. Not something that should happen in serious political interviews, is it? A dead giveaway this wasn’t one. But they weren’t laughing at Trump. They were laughing at…Kaitlan Collins. At democracy. At its values of peace and justice and truth and tolerance. They were laughing in contempt — at the rest of us. Because in this charade of a Potemkin village built for Donald Trump, they were the carefully selected, gleeful villagers.