MSNBC president open to Trump town hall with ‘parameters’

MSNBC President Rashida Jones indicated on Monday she would be open to having former President Trump, who is running for the White House in 2024, on the network for a town hall event with guidelines in place to “control the environment.”  

“If Trump came to you specifically and says, ‘I want to be on your air to do it,’ would you say yes?” Axios reporter Sara Fischer asked Jones, alluding to a potential on-air town hall.

“Would I say yes? It would be a conversation. I think you’d have to put parameters about how to control the environment,” Jones said during the interview at the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival, according to a clip from the outlet. 

Trump, who is running for another presidential term after losing his 2020 reelection bid, appeared live last month on CNN for a town hall that drew 3.3 million viewers but sparked criticism against the network. 

The former president later joined Sean Hannity for a taped town hall event that aired on Fox News.

Jones said her newsgroup is “having conversations with all of the candidates” about “how to bring their point of view to the audience.”

“There are lots of ways to do that, whether it’s a live interview, whether it’s a tape interview, or whether it’s a town hall, whether it’s a debate. We still have 505 days left until Election Day. … I don’t know that a town hall tomorrow is something that our audience is looking for, or any audience, but as you look at the next 505 days, I think you’ll see a lot of that across the portfolio,” Jones said. 

Trump is polling at the head of an increasingly crowded field of GOP presidential primary candidates — including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — as the 2024 race heats up.