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https://news.yahoo.com/cnns-trump-town-hall-nabs-183313669.html

CNN's town hall with former President Trump drew 3.1 million viewers on Wednesday, but network executives faced a tsunami of criticism for giving the Republican candidate a platform to spread lies. The audience counted by Nielsen in preliminary numbers was the largest for CNN since the network's coverage of the July hearings over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Trump's appearance delivered a strong number for CNN, it was the size of a typical audience for Tucker Carlson on Fox News before he was fired last month. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins grilled Trump for 70 minutes in front of an audience of New Hampshire Republican voters at St. Anselm College in Goffstown. It was the rare appearance by Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential race, on a media outlet that is not friendly to him. The crowd gave the event the atmosphere of a Trump rally as members cheered the candidate's answers, even when he disparaged E. Jean Carroll, the woman who was recently awarded $5 million after a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing her in 1994. Trump also repeated his false claims that his 2020 election loss was "rigged" and that then-Vice President Mike Pence could have saved him from defeat by not certifying the election.

"Live lying works," Mark Lukasiewicz, said dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University. "Live fact-checking does not. Trump is demonstrably unworthy of the risk that CNN chose to take." The event was not well-received inside the network, either. "I was just ashamed," said one producer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to criticize an employer. "Everybody knows Trump lies. Everybody knows what hes going to say. His propaganda is what his followers want." CNN's own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, said the event evoked the 2016 campaign, when media outlets gave Trump ample airtime as he rewarded them with big audiences. In the years since, CNN's then-chief, Jeff Zucker, has repeatedly expressed regret for turning Trump into a ratings attraction. "It felt like 2016 all over again," Darcy wrote in his newsletter Wednesday evening. "It was Trump's unhinged social media feed brought to life on stage. And Collins was put in an uncomfortable position, given the town hall was conducted in front of a Republican audience that applauded Trump, giving a sense of unintended endorsement to his shameful antics."