Washington Seconds before Donald Trump took the stage at CNN’s television studio, host Kaitlan Collins explained the rules of the evening. She was done with it quickly, because “everything is allowed, no question is taboo,” she explained. Trump and she had agreed that “none of us would put any conditions in advance”.
However, as much became clear in an hour of stage discussion, a few basic rules would not have hurt. Trump blasphemed, he attacked, he interrupted without a break. He called Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi “crazy Nancy” and people who think Biden is the rightful US President “very stupid”. All of this happened almost without barriers, because presenter Collins could hardly cope with Trump’s torrent of speech.
Trump was in top form and seemed anything but weakened. Many circumstances currently speak against the ex-president, who wants to be elected presidential candidate for the US Republicans for the third time in a row. He has been on a 34-count criminal trial since April, and this week a civil jury found him guilty of sexual assault.
Trump is the only ex-president in US history to have been convicted by a court. Other indictments are in the works, both in connection with the storming of the Capitol and hundreds of government documents that Trump is said to have illegally stolen from the White House.
Trump’s election campaign is developing into a permanent defensive battle against the judiciary. And despite this – or precisely because of this – as things stand at present, he probably has the best chance of winning the Republican nomination. His poll numbers and donations to him have recently increased.
Crucial phase of the US election campaign
With the CNN debate, the US election campaign is now entering a crucial phase. Biden is applying for a second term, which means the Democratic candidate has been chosen. For the Republicans, on the other hand, everything is open. The coming weeks and months will show whether his supporters’ support is enough to secure Trump’s party’s nomination again. Then Trump would be Biden’s direct challenger again in November 2024, as in 2020.
However, it is also conceivable that support for Trump will crumble and that Republicans will turn to alternatives. Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of Florida, is scheduled to run for the White House in May, and candidates such as ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley have already started their campaigns.
But the CNN appearance is also proof that nobody can get past Trump at the moment. “Trump is the Republican leader, he has to appear with us,” said David Zaslav, managing director of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, in advance.
The station hosted the talk in a townhall format, with a mostly Republican audience in New Hampshire. In the east coast state, primaries help decide who the Republicans will nominate as candidates for the presidential election.
On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.
(Photo: Reuters)
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with a big interview with Trump, live and unfiltered. In practice, however, the format simply offered him a larger stage and did not challenge him much. “I don’t need slips of paper to read from, unlike a certain other person,” Trump said of Biden.
Otherwise, he summarized his substantive message in one sentence: “The economy is rushing, inflation is high, the border with Mexico is a disaster and the Afghan withdrawal was one of the most embarrassing moments in US history”. An impending default by the USA, according to Trump, will not cause him any sleepless nights. “Then we might have a bad day, a bad week,” he explained.
And the European Union, Trump criticized, is paying far too little to support the Ukraine war. “You take advantage of us, like so many do,” denounced Trump, who had threatened to leave NATO during his term in office.
“If I’m president, I’ll end this war in 24 hours. The war would be over in 24 hours,” Trump claimed on CNN Townhall. Moderator Collins tried to pin Trump down: who would win the war, Russia or Ukraine? The ex-president evaded: “I just want the dying to stop. And that Europe pays more. They have enough money, they should draw level.”
“A Cat or Dog Named Vagina”
Trump had not worked with CNN since the 2016 campaign. The station is otherwise condemned by Trump as the spearhead of a “left mob”, he has often called CNN “the headquarters for fake news” and called on his supporters to boycott the station. But Trump’s former favorite Fox News is no longer fully at his side and rarely broadcasts his mass rallies. Republican competitors like DeSantis, Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, on the other hand, get a lot of airtime.
The fact that Trump chose CNN for his TV premiere in the current election campaign was seen by some strategists as an attempt to appeal to a broader audience. However, there was little sign of this in the studio. In places, Trump’s monologues looked like a series of postings on his social network “Truth Social”, only in video format.
Just this week, a jury found Trump guilty of sexually assaulting the journalist.
(Photo: IMAGO/UPI Photo)
“I have no idea who this woman is,” he said of publicist E. Jean Carroll, to whom he had to pay $5 million after being found guilty of sexual assault. The audience clapped and cheered for Trump.
Carroll mocked Trump for “having a cat or dog named Vagina,” he claimed, turning the civil lawsuit into a stand-up act. It’s true that women “will take anything” when faced with a powerful man, he affirmed. “Rich and famous people have an advantage, it’s been a million years,” Trump said. “He will not apologize for the truth.”
>> Read here: Comment: Trump is vulnerable – but not because of a single guilty verdict
Presenter Collins was extremely well prepared, she kept getting involved, confronted Trump with facts and still gave him space to answer. And yet she seemed powerless because Trump hardly responded to objections. He spent fifteen minutes on the charge that the 2020 election was stolen and that he never instigated his supporters to storm the Capitol.
January 6, 2021 was “a beautiful day”, he “just gave a speech”, he explained. “Mr. President…” Collins tried, “Mr. President…there is no evidence the elections are stolen.” Trump talked over them. “There’s no evidence, you have to say that. They have an agenda,” he said to applause.
Scenes like this made it clear why more than 30 percent of the Republican base still supports Trump. A number that may be enough to secure him the nomination. For his followers, he is still the “angry citizen in chief” who seems to be shaken by nothing, no impeachment, no indictments, no trials. And no critical questions either.
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