Campaign Report
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Campaign Report
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Fallout from CNN’s Trump town hall
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Former President Trump’s prime-time appearance unfolded just as any political observer might expect. He fired off a series of falsehoods, swiped at the media and Kaitlan Collins, and did so to cheers and laughs from a largely friendly, in-person audience.
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The appearance on Wednesday — Trump’s first on the network since 2016 — underscored the former president’s mastery of how to steamroll mainstream media and rile up the GOP’s conservative base, all while putting on a made-for-television show. It also offered a preview — or perhaps a reminder — of what the media and the country can expect from Trump as he once again seeks the GOP’s 2024 presidential nod.
Collins made an effort to contain and fact-check Trump, a particularly difficult task, as many other journalists who have interviewed the former president have discovered. But that didn’t stem a tide of criticism of CNN for its handling of the town hall.
The decision to feature an audience “made up of Republicans and undeclared voters who tend to take part in New Hampshire’s Republican primary,” for example, gave Trump a loud, supportive crowd to cheer him on throughout the event.
The town hall also saw Trump run through his most controversial hits: he refused to back down from his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged, defended the Jan. 6 rioters and suggested that he would pardon many of them if elected president and insisted that he completed his long-promised wall along the U.S. southern border.
Both during and after his appearance, the town hall became the subject of pointed criticism from Democrats, who castigated CNN for giving the former president a high-profile platform to further his controversial political message and most egregious falsehoods.
“CNN should be ashamed of themselves,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”
But Trump wasn’t immune from criticism either. He aggressively dodged questions about his position on abortion — an issue that many Republicans have struggled to navigate over the past year — and potentially dug himself into a deeper hole with comments about the special counsel investigation into his possession of presidential records, including hundreds of classified documents.
The performance also drew criticism from some Republicans, including the main super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential ambitions, which accused Trump of focusing too much on the past rather than looking to the future.
“The CNN townhall was, as expected, over an hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past,” Erin Perrine, the communications director for the super PAC Never Back Down, said in a statement. “After 76 years, Trump still doesn’t know where he stands on important conservative issues like supporting life and the 2nd amendment. How does that Make America Great Again?”
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Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, I’m Max Greenwood. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington.
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Key election stories and other recent campaign coverage:
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The biggest event so far in the 2024 election cycle took place in New Hampshire Wednesday evening. Former President Trump participated in a town hall event hosted by CNN, with Kaitlan Collins serving as moderator. The fact that the event was happening at all had drawn some criticism beforehand — mostly, but not exclusively, from liberals and the left. On the other hand, a ratings bonanza was forecast by many media-watchers. …
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Republican Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), whose relationship with former President Trump has frayed after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, said Thursday he won’t be backing the former president’s bid to return to the White House, one day after Trump’s controversial CNN town hall. “I don’t intend to support him for the Republican nomination,” Young told reporters Thursday. The senator dinged Trump for his comments on …
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CNN’s town hall with former President Trump in New Hampshire on Wednesday was filled with a number of headline-making moments, marking Trump’s first appearance on the network in years. The former president kicked off the forum, which was moderated by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, by touting his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Trump also went after E. Jean Carroll one day after he was found liable …
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Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
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- 155 days until Louisiana’s gubernatorial election
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182 days until Kentucky’s and Mississippi’s gubernatorial generals
- 546 days until the 2024 general election
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Trump and DeSantis in Iowa
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© Associated Press/File/Getty Images
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DeSantis is jetting off to Iowa on Saturday, but Trump won’t be far away.
The former president will hold an organizing rally in Des Moines on the same day, marking his second trip to Iowa since launching his 2024 comeback campaign.
Meanwhile, the Florida governor is slated to attend a pair of events on Saturday: an annual family picnic hosted by Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) in Sioux Center and a state GOP fundraiser in Cedar Rapids.
The dueling events on the same day underscore the increasingly hot rivalry between Trump and DeSantis, who hasn’t formally launched a campaign yet, but is expected to in the coming weeks.
For both men, the Iowa engagements represent the kind of on-the-ground politicking that is seen as crucial in the Iowa caucuses, the first-in-the-nation nominating contest. Trump notably shirked that kind of campaigning in 2016 and eventually lost the caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Now, however, Trump and his team appear eager to shut down DeSantis’s presidential prospects as soon as possible, and his visit to the Hawkeye State on Saturday is seen as an effort to counter a growing pro-DeSantis operation in the state. Never Back Down, the main super PAC backing DeSantis’s presidential ambitions, has hired several staffers in Iowa in an effort to lay the organizing groundwork for DeSantis in the state.
The super PAC has also been airing ads in Iowa and other early-voting states, like South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada, since last month, seeking to give DeSantis crucial cover ahead of a likely presidential campaign announcement.
Polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, which are still nearly nine months away, has been scarce, but most show Trump leading DeSantis by varying margins. Yet gauging the caucuses is a difficult task, and DeSantis hasn’t kicked off a formal campaign yet, leaving plenty of time for the landscape in the Hawkeye State to shift in the coming months.
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Branch out with a different read from The Hill:
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It was 2016 all over again Wednesday night as former President Donald Trump took part in a raucous town hall filled with incendiary claims and jabs at the network. Trump fielded questions from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Republican voters in Manchester, N.H., for more than an hour about his false claims surrounding the 2020 election, his myriad of legal troubles, abortion, the war in Ukraine, immigration and the economy. …
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A super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for president assailed former President Trump on Wednesday for his performance during a CNN town hall event, arguing it validated the need to find a different Republican nominee in 2024. “On the same day Ron DeSantis was assailing Joe Biden’s border crisis, Donald Trump was on CNN attacking DeSantis and lying about finishing the border wall,” Erin Perrine, a spokesperson …
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Local and state headlines regarding campaigns and elections:
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Election news we’ve flagged from other outlets:
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Ron DeSantis can’t quit Covid (Politico)
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2024 Republicans are still not touching Donald Trump’s legal woes (Semafor)
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When is it too late to run for Senate (Rollcall)
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Key stories on The Hill right now:
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The FBI declined to immediately provide congressional Republicans with a document the lawmakers say outlines an “alleged criminal scheme” involving President Biden and a foreign national, blowing through a Wednesday deadline to produce the unverified information that was subpoenaed by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman … Read more
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) warned Thursday that former President Trump’s recent comments advising Republicans to allow a default have complicated the effort to raise the debt ceiling and prevent an economic crisis. Jeffries predicted Trump’s remarks would only encourage House Republicans to dig in with their … Read more
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Opinions related to campaigns and elections submitted to The Hill:
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You’re all caught up. See you next time!
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