CNN praises Kaitlan Collins’ ‘tough’ questioning at Trump town hall amid furious backlash at network

‘You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them,’ CNN CEO says during editorial call with angry staff

CNN has praised Trump town hall moderator Kaitlan Collins as the network faced mounting criticism for giving a platform to the former president to share his many false claims.

“Tonight Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist,” CNN said in a statement.

“She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time, to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner. That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”

Collins was also backed up by fellow CNN anchor Poppy Harlow, who criticised pro-Trump analyst David Urban for comparing the event to Joe Biden appearing on Fox News.

Harlow hosted CNN This Morning on Thursday alongside Phil Mattingly with panellists Mr Urban, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times and Van Jones.

“This was a forum where Kaitlan got a lot of news made. A lot of things that we have not heard him talk about. A lot of issues that he has not been pushed [on] because when people are travelling aboard his plane or he’s going to a rally, it’s something very different,” Haberman said. “And so how it all plays for his team, and they’re feeling good that they’re getting cheers, is very different than what it might play out.”

“Kaitlan was like a matador against the biggest bull in American history. And I think she put a lot of knives in that are going to pay off later on in terms of getting him to say stuff that he had not actually said on the record before, I think that’s very important,” Jones added.

“Yeah, but with Maggie’s point ... Republicans got what they needed out of this – Trump ... he’s tough, pugilistic. People like the base like to see that,” Urban noted. “He’s in there mixing up with the media again. Not a friendly environment for Donald Trump to come back to CNN. I kind of joked that you would never see Joe Biden wading into Fox News, a debate...”

“I don’t think that’s a fair comparison,” Harlow said.

Mr Jones noted that the audience for Mr Trump’s CNN appearance was “friendly”.

“I also think you can’t get a more objective journalist and interviewer than Kaitlan Collins,” Harlow added.

“Kaitlan did a great job. I’m just saying that Biden is not going to, he’s not going to stand up and do that. I would love to see him take questions,” Urban said.

“But with whom? Sean Hannity?” Haberman pressed.

Elsewhere in the broadcast, Mr Jones said, “I think if you’re a Democrat watching that you think, ‘We’ve been criticizing and complaining about Biden? This is a horror show that we don’t want a rerun of,’ and I think a lot of Democrats were appalled”.

According to former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, network CEO Chris Licht began an editorial call on Thursday morning by praising Ms Collins for a “masterful performance last night”.

“I couldn’t be more proud of her,” he added.

“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them,” Mr Licht told employees, many of whom are furious about the Trump event, according to Stelter.

“Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news. Made a lot of news,” Mr Licht said. “That is our job.”

“While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story,” Mr Licht added.

He said covering Mr Trump is “messy and tricky, but it’s our job” and that “America was served very well by what we did last night”.

Stelter wrote, “Many CNN employees strongly disagree.”

Former Florida Republican Congressman and host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, led the chorus of outrage on Thursday morning, saying that “I'm constantly telling people not to catastrophize over Trump, that he's actually going to lose because he keeps drilling down deeper and deeper into his base”.

“I'm gonna use catastrophizing language here, but it was just it was disgraceful on every level. I wouldn't say it's dangerous for democracy because we passed that a long time ago, but it showed the corrosive effects of Trumpism over eight years,” he added.

“And I've got to say the most shocking part was an audience who cheered on a president who tried to overturn American democracy. An audience that mocked and ridiculed a woman who a jury of her peers, of Donald Trump's peers, found had been sexually assaulted. Those Americans their last night turned that into a punch line.”

“They laughed and dismissed cops getting the s*** kicked out of them on January the sixth, over and over again. Calling a cop a thug, who actually was trying to stop people on the House floor from being killed. I could go just could go on and on,” he said.

Author and journalist David Simon said, “When I did the job, I’d imagine being a decent line reporter at a Fox outlet, or the WSJ, or NY Post and having my best work adjacent to miserable editorial stances and choices? What, I wondered, might compel me to resign? Well, If I worked at CNN today, I would quit. Honestly”.

Former MSNBC broadcaster Keith Olbermann called the town hall “the Hindenburg of TV news”.

“@CNN gave its credibility to Trump’s madness It must fire CEO Chris Licht: its owners must sell the brand they destroyed; E. Jean Carroll must sue over new defamation; @kaitlancollins must sue her agent,” he tweeted.

“If you haven’t been paying attention to Donald Trump for a while, the CNN town hall is a reintroduction to what he’s been telling his supporters for two years,” Garrett Haake of NBC News wrote.