Lawmakers and political insiders had a wide range of reactions to former President Donald Trump’s participation in a Town Hall event hosted by CNN.
Trump’s May 10 appearance at the New Hampshire event allowed the candidate to present his plan for the country as he wades deeper into his 2024 presidential campaign.
Many Republicans congratulated the former president on his appearance, including avid Trump backer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
“I enjoyed congratulating President Trump on his outstanding town hall and undefeated record against CNN,” Greene said in a Twitter post. “They had to air him telling the truth about how the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. We laughed and laughed.”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in a tweet. “President Trump dominated CNN tonight. He remains America’s leader.”
Fellow Arizonan and former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake also wrote on Twitter calling it a “Masterful performance” by Trump, adding, “If @kaitlancollins thought she could win a debate with the 45th & 47th President of the United States of America, she was sadly mistaken.”
Not all Republicans were in support of Trump’s performance, however. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was less enthusiastic about the speech, posting to Twitter that “Donald Trump refused to say tonight that he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia. More proof that he continues to be Putin’s puppet.”
Another group of anti-Trump Republicans, the Lincoln Project, added to their website about the Town Hall event saying “CNN gave Donald Trump a campaign kickoff celebration tonight.”
The group asserted that leadership at the network “sold out CNN’s values to chase Tucker Carlson’s viewers in a desperate attempt to find lost ratings … Tonight we saw the MAGA Trump Cult in full regalia.”
George Conway, notable Republican, Lincoln Project founder, and former husband of the 2016 Trump campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, voiced his disdain saying, “I’m no media expert, but it seems to me that interviewing a narcissistic psychopath in front of a packed house of his flying monkeys is not the best format for television journalism.”
Democrats weigh in
Democrat responses were predictably negative, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making an appearance on MSNBC to say that she found CNN’s televised event a “profoundly irresponsible decision.”
“What we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk … in front of a national audience, and I could not have disagreed with it more.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) was equally outraged, saying he might suffer long-term negative effects from watching the event.
“As someone who was at the Cleveland presidential debate, where President Trump ran right over Chris Wallace… I had a little bit of PTSD watching that last night,” Coons said on CNN on Thursday.
President Joe Biden used the event to attempt to garner support for his campaign, posting to Twitter, “It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that? If you don’t, pitch in to our campaign.”
Trump didn’t hold back during the exchange, which was the first major television event of his 2024 presidential campaign.
The former president stuck to his guns about the 2020 presidential election and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots. When asked if he regretted his actions in not disavowing violence sooner, Trump recited his tweets asking people to be peaceful at the march.
Trump also said he saw the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as a difficult situation that was more than “winning” vs. “losing.”
The former president said, if re-elected, he planned to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and would “drill baby, drill” for oil to ease economic pressure on Americans. On the debt crisis, Trump said he thinks the country will have to default at some point: “Our country is dying. Our country is being destroyed by stupid people,” he said.
He said he believed default is better than “spending money like drunken sailors,” and Republicans should not raise the debt limit, predicting that Democrats “will absolutely cave.”
Trump also addressed the topics of abortion and the Second Amendment, saying he is committed to protecting human life and the right for Americans to keep and bear arms, as well as fighting the mental health crisis in this country.
Janice Hisle contributed to this report.
