Ex-Trump aide says former president hurt by CNN's town hall: America 'saw he’s a ranting lunatic'
"The View" bucked the trend Thursday with a discussion about CNN's town hall with Donald Trump, with one of the hosts saying the widely criticized decision to give the former president a platform was actually good news for America.
CNN's airing of the show has caused "outrage and fear" in the U.S. and among the country's international allies, CNN's Jim Scuitto reported Thursday.
For a little over an hour, Trump was allowed to lie without enough fact-checking, lamented the View's Sunny Hostin. She complained that moderator Kaitlan Collins took too long before she began to correct his claims.
But Alyssa Farah Griffin, who previously worked for Trump in the White House, argued that it is important to give him a platform because it would allow him to remind the world of who he is, and said that's exactly what happened.
"Seventy-four million people voted for him," said Griffin, "He's the GOP frontrunner, outperforming other people by double digits. By the way, people got to see who he is: a ranting lunatic siding with Vladimir Putin. He didn't win a single voter. That was radioactive for independents and moderates."
Others complained that Trump shouldn't be normalized.
Joy Behar said her blood pressure was up all night, and Hostin recalled that the two were "rage texting" each other throughout the evening.
Behar complained that the audience was filled with MAGA fans and Donald Trump's own supporters.
It's something that Media Matters president Angelo Carusone warned often happens with town hall events from the news networks. According to him, the campaigns can fill the audience with their own people so that they get friendly questions.
That was noticed quickly by those watching and criticized. At one point, former Republican Tim Miller observed GOP fundraiser Chris Applegate was in the audience.
"Wait a minute. Do you think they should put only pro-Trump people in the audience?" Behar asked.
"No, but — to be honest, I didn't like the platform. I want to say Kaitlan Collins did a masterful job as a young woman, seeing a 30-year-old journalist take on one of the most powerful men in the world. She got in there. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback it, but she stood there, kept her cool when he called her a nasty woman."
Hostin disagreed, saying that it took her too long to start fighting back against Trump's false statements. She said she wanted the network to run a chyron along the bottom of the screen, saying, "This is a Lie."
"I don't think that she was prepared. I don't think he should have been given a platform," Hostin said. "That's what the media's job is. The media's job is to hold their feet to the fire and to get at the truth. He said things like this, 'I took in hundreds of billions in taxes from China.' China didn't screw us, Trump did! Because if you really understand the tariffs, Trump imposed these tariffs, but U.S. companies pay those tariffs, and U.S. companies pass those charges on to U.S. people, Americans. He also said something like 'I create the biggest tax cuts in history.' No, he did not! He gave the 1 percent tax cuts. He gave corporations tax cuts. Lie."
See the full conversation below or at the link here.