Following social media the night of and morning after the Trump CNN Town Hall, depending on which side of the fence you were on, you either believe Donald Trump had the best night ever and CNN bombed, or Donald Trump made an absolute fool of himself and CNN’s Kaitlin Collins stuck it to the 45th President of the United States.
But what if that ongoing argument alone, along with other realities, suggests that both Donald Trump and CNN came out of Wednesday night’s event as winners?
When you unwrap all that the evening entailed, it’s completely fair for both sides to claim victory.
For Donald Trump, he got to do exactly what he wants to do: Beat up the media, while simultaneously playing the victim card. Like it or not, it’s a brilliant strategy that his base absolutely loves and has been effective for Trump over his political career. He gets to take credit for going into the Lion’s Den at CNN, while then acting stunned he’s getting mistreated, and then respond in kind as only Trump can, while declaring victory after the event.
Rinse and repeat. We’ve seen this script before.
And for Donald Trump, who is still technically in a primary (although he holds a large lead), this is all he needs to do to have himself a runaway primary victory. Trump needs to make absolutely sure that the roughly 30-50% of the Republican Party that is solidly in his corner does not leave him for Ron DeSantis, or anyone else. So Trump went out on the stage in New Hampshire in front of a friendly audience and basically played his “Greatest Hits” album while getting to use CNN as his personal punching bag.
Meantime, for CNN, the success is, in large part, in the numbers. Nielsen Fast National data showed CNN scoring 3.12 million total viewers and a whopping 703,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic. Also of note, early data does not reflect the town hall’s full viewership as later numbers will; both CNN.com and CNN’s apps aired the town hall live as well, numbers which have yet to be released as of this column.
Compare that number to CNN’s average viewership for the 8:00-11:00 PM ET time slot was under 600,000 the night before the Trump Town Hall event, and right off the bat, that’s nothing but a huge win for the TV network.
On top of that, CNN is actually helping Donald Trump lock up the Republican nomination. I imagine the network would deny this, but given all the positives that come out of an event like this for Trump, at least in a primary, CNN knows that Trump’s biggest supporters’ hatred of their operation is only a boon to his candidacy.
There are two reasons why this would be good for CNN.
- They get a short-term ratings bump the longer Trump is around and in the news cycle.
- It theoretically helps their preferred candidate, Joe Biden, win re-election. We know polling is incredibly inaccurate this far out, however, all polls show Biden in a much tougher re-election vs. Ron DeSantis than Donald Trump.
And the icing on the cake? If Trump were to pull the rabbit out of a hat in 2024, as he did in 2016, then CNN has four years of fodder and an automatic ratings lift during a time when cable news ratings continue to struggle in a fractured media environment.
And last, but not least, it was leaked the day of the Town Hall that CNN is expected to give Kaitlin Collins, who moderated the Trump conversation, the 9:00 PM time slot. As the network gets set to try and make her their next star, the news leaks the same day CNN is set to have five times its typical audience. How convenient.
So there were no losers on Wednesday night. Well, I can think of one group of possible losers: the American people.
But for Trump and CNN. Winners. Big time. Or as Trump might say, “Bigly”.
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
