Reaction to CNN’s New Hampshire town hall event with former President Donald Trump continues to be mixed, but SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish had praise for moderator Kaitlan Collins.
“Kaitlan Collins did as well as anyone could have in that situation,” Smerconish said Thursday morning. “I do not envy her given that task. She was poised, she was smart, she asked intelligent follow-up questions. She did as well as you can do. What else could she have done?
“As I watched all the reaction, both on television postmortem and on the Twitterverse — because I was keenly interested to see how this would play, although I had my strong suspicions, and I was right — there’s universal praise for Kaitlan Collins and appropriately so,” continued Smerconish. “Even the people who are most upset at this event having transpired, go to great lengths to say ‘But she did wonderful’.”
Collins continually clashed with Trump over his allegations surrounding the 2020 presidential election being “rigged” against him, before calling the moderator “a nasty person”. However, at the conclusion of the event, Trump told Collins “good job”.
Smerconish also defended CNN — where he hosts a weekend program — for its decision to hold the event in the first place. He argued that avoiding covering Trump’s 2024 Republican presidential run is impossible.
“I don’t think you can have a rule only for Trump,” said Smerconish. “I think you have to have a rule for everybody.”
