![]() ![]() Whatever else it was, the Trump show on CNN certainly did remind viewers, all too clearly, of who he is. Right up until Trump finally exits public life, whenever that will be, this debate will continue: Should Trump be given a platform to make his attacks on American democracy, and, if so, should you listen? Does the mere fact of his large following in an increasingly radicalized and extremist Republican Party require that news organizations broadcast his views to millions? One awful hour of television will not resolve the matter. The question, of course, was why this was happening in the first place-a question that is ever more pressing, considering that Trump is now and will likely remain the front-runner for the Republican nomination to reclaim the office he lost in 2020. “You can’t keep saying that all night long.” Throughout, Collins struggled, and how could she not, having been assigned a near-impossible task? One revealing moment, among so many, came well into the hour, after Trump interrupted a long, untruthful speech about how he had “finished” the border wall, which he had not in fact finished, to mention, yet again, the “rigged election” of 2020. When the show was finally over, the audience offered Trump a standing ovation. When he called her a “whack job,” they laughed once more. ![]() When he said that he felt sorry for her ex-husband, the audience laughed. ![]() Trump’s response was to insult Carroll again on national TV. Jean Carroll and awarded her five million dollars in damages. Only a day before the CNN event, a jury in New York had found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. The more offensive Trump’s words, it seemed, the more they cheered. The crowd hooted, chuckled, or clapped when Trump called the former Speaker of the House “Crazy Nancy” and when he insisted that his former Vice-President, Mike Pence, had the power to single-handedly overturn the election results on January 6, 2021. But the whoops and cheers for Trump throughout did not convey undecidedness. CNN described the audience on Wednesday night at Saint Anselm College as a collection of Republican and undecided New Hampshire voters who would consider voting Republican in the upcoming G.O.P. Instead, he still commands his following, which means that he gets to be an angry old man shouting on the television and not merely at it. Trump without the approval of the mob, his mob, would be just another angry old American man, an unwilling Florida retiree shouting at the television after a round of golf. The cheering crowd, in fact, was the tell, the most revealing part of the whole exercise. ![]()
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