This is an unmitigated disaster for Chris Licht and CNN
Despite all of the anticipation for the former guy’s town hall event, it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster for CNN – the once relatively objective news network that is now roughly where Fox News was in the early 2000s when it comes to right-wing bias.
As much as the punditry is still trying to sell it unanimously as a good thing for Donald Trump. Yet, no one’s really talking about it one news cycle later – and the majority of coverage on it isn’t so much about the event itself but about everything that happened behind the scenes – with Chris Licht doing every bit of damage control he can think of.
It’s bad enough that this was a ratings disaster, but it seems like there’s other things he’s afraid of leaking out about how he treats his underlings. In the case of Kaitlan Collins, who ended up with the assignment of moderating Trump’s town hall, however, there seems to be the opposite problem: Licht chose her for the assignment due to her past in right-wing media and the fact that she was on friendly terms with the former guy – which is hardly what anyone could reasonably argue is objective journalism.
Regardless of what Licht and his network are saying about objectivity, it’s clear that this was nothing but a shoddily put together campaign event to resuscitate Trump 2024. The message they got in return, however was clear: We’ve had enough of the former guy.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making