Thanks to CNN, Trump held a prime-time rally masquerading as a “town hall” on May 10. Although he had been held liable for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll by a jury of six men and three women who had awarded her $5 million in damages the day before, Trump was enjoying the narrative moment.
You might say Trump was almost in hog heaven, except for the efforts of moderator Kaitlan Collins who, having once before been a thorn in his side, was doing as fine a job of calling Trump out on his mountain of lies as anyone could possibly do.
Much of the time that Trump thought he was getting away with his stream of lies and misinformation, Collins was pushing back with the facts and the former president was left grimacing with disdain. Eventually, Trump called Collins a “nasty person” to the delight of those in attendance—Republicans and a few Independents—who voted for him in 2020.
In the political world of conspiracy theories, mediated memes and post-truth America, we might say that this was par for the Trumpian course. Unfortunately, this dystopian antidemocratic versus antiauthoritarian reality playing out in the United States is not some kind of George Orwellian Animal Farm or 1984. It’s the real deal, folks.
Here are a sampling of titles from journalistic commentators after the event, panning CNN’s decision to hold the town hall:
In defense of the prime-time “town rally” with Trump and his audience, chairman of CNN Chris Licht had this say: “People woke up, and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before.”
Licht is probably correct though most media critics disagreed. Inverting Trump’s message: Unlike those in attendance who were applauding, laughing and yakking up the insults and lies flowing from the former president’s mouth, the rest of the non-FOX news and non-alt right media consumers were indeed taking stock of what a dangerous man Trump has become. That is assuming, of course, that they did not figure Trump out back in 2016 and more recently after January 6.
Above all, for a pathological liar there is perhaps nobody inside or outside of politics who is as transparent as the USA’s “idiot savant” politician.
I refer to Trump as an “idiot savant” because he knows next to nothing about politics, history and most other subject matters. Like a student that has not read the assignments for class, he tries to fake his way through the material and obviously fails. Yet, Trump is a genius when it comes to mediating and shaping, if not controlling, legal and political narratives in this country as evidenced by 71,000 million voters in 2020.
At the same time, from a prosecutorial perspective, the CNN town hall was a gift that kept on giving as the former president made multiple incriminating remarks about trying to overturn the 2020 election, about January 6th, the classified documents and more.
Here is a sampling of Trump’s comments from the town hall highlighted by MSNBC on “Morning Joe” the next day, May 11, 2023:
- Continued attacks on 2020 election, calling it a “shame” and “rigged”
- Said E. Jean Carroll’s civil rape case was a “fake story” and referred to her as a “whack job”
- Called Moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person”
- Complimented Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a “smart guy,” refused to side with Ukraine
- Defended keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, said he had “every right to do it”
- Pushed Republicans to default if they don’t get “massive cuts” on the debt ceiling deal
- Said he was “inclined to pardon some January 6th rioters.”
Fortunately, while Trump has been able to fool millions and millions of Republicans, he has not been able to fool any juries, civil or criminal, in the cases both he or the Trump Organization have been subject to over the years. Moreover, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg certainly has Trump’s number, and it appears that Fulton County DA Fani Willis and DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith do as well.
More concretely in the short term, Judge Juan Merchan scheduled a compulsory video hearing with Trump on Tuesday May 23, the day after the CNN town hall, to lay out the terms of a protective order effectively establishing a “gag order” that would subject the former president and 2024 candidate to contempt charges should he violate the order. Should he be charged with contempt and/or convicted on one or more of the 34 felony charges, you can bet that Trump will appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court.
And on the eve before this hearing, E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, notified the judge in her remaining case in New York, referred to as Carroll I, that Carroll was moving to amend her complaint in that action in order to sue Trump, again, for defaming her during CNN’s recent town hall.
The new filing asks the court to update filings in Carroll I to include the fact of the verdict against Trump from Carroll II, and acknowledge his comments about her on CNN and his social media posts on Truth Social. Trump has opposed Carroll’s motion to amend the complaint, but before the case can proceed to a jury verdict, Trump’s status as a federal employee and whether he can be sued in that capacity will have to be resolved.
Should the new claims be allowed to proceed, according to Joyce Vance, this “could cost Trump even more money than the $5 million he already owes Carroll. That’s because a jury could very easily consider Trump’s conduct here to be outrageous—he defamed her again just one day after the first jury rendered its verdict against him.”
Because of this sort of flagrant abuse a jury could award substantial punitive damages as well.
The Washington Post’s Ramesh Ponnuru laid out a number of questions he believes Trump should have been asked during the CNN town hall. Among them, Ponnuru suggests that CNN should have used the opportunity to press Trump on his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Ponnuru also would have confronted Trump with his own claims about “American carnage,” dating back to his 2017 inauguration address, his hiring practices and his comments about Carroll.
What Trump was selling on CNN to his already conned consumers in attendance was essentially the same “bullshit” (to quote his third appointed AG and “fixer” Bill Barr) that he was peddling during the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections and is setting up for 2024.
Ultimately, my “favorite” part of the evening was when the Liar-in-Chief fantasized that, if he was elected again as president in 2024, he could meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky and Russian President Putin to resolve the war in Ukraine “in one day, 24 hours.” This, from the same guy who, back in 2017-18, with Republican control of both the House and the Senate, could not get any money allocated to build his wall on the southern border.
Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University, co-founder of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime, and the author of Criminology on Trump (2022) who is currently writing a sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the Republican Party, and the Threat to American Democracy, to be published in early 2024.
