Former President Donald Trump surprised many supporters with his decision to appear on a televised CNN town hall meeting, and the whole thing was an obvious hit job from the first question. But if CNN thought it was pulling one over on voters, its post-town hall panel proved that they weren’t fooled.
CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman sat down with a group of voters after the town hall ended to talk about their impressions of Trump’s performance on Wednesday night. CNN likely hoped that the panel of voters would turn on Trump and blast him for his answers throughout the night.
But right at the outset, the post-town hall panel turned against CNN, not Trump, and it was hilarious to watch.
Following the town hall broadcast, Tuchman kicked off his program exactly how the town hall itself began; with left-wing propaganda, calling the former president a liar multiple times in the course of framing his first question:
“Donald Trump, you have to be blunt about it, is not a truth-teller. That’s the way he’s always been when he was a businessman and when he’s been a politician,” Tuchman said to the group, according to Mediaite. “He has lied about the 2020 election, stuffed ballot boxes; it’s all made up. He’s lost dozens of court cases.”
“Does it bother you that he keeps talking about 2020 and not 2024? How do you feel about those lies?” Tuchman asked the panel of 8 voters.
Unfortunately for CNN, the very first member of the panel to answer Tuchman was onto CNN’s propaganda and called them out on it.
“So, I feel like part of it is also the media narrative, as you guys asked him the first question at the town hall about the 2020 election rather than current stuff,” a 40-year-old Trump voter named Jonathan Leslie immediately replied without hesitation.
However, Tuchman persisted, asking “Don’t you think it’s time he started talking about 2024 and not lies that aren’t true?”
But Leslie wasn’t fooled. “Couldn’t the media ask him a question about 2024?” he wondered.
“There were questions, but you’re right, that was the first thing,” Tuchman admitted. “But that’s something that was on our mind, and that’s why it was asked first.”
?MUST WATCH?
CNN Reporter looks like a deer in headlights when a GOP voter slams the network for asking Trump about the 2020 election.
JONATHAN LESLIE (R): “The first question at the town hall about the 2020 election, rather than current stuff?”
REPORTER: “Don’t you think… pic.twitter.com/QtWdPjzRwF
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 11, 2023
The panel member is so right. Indeed, the very first question that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked was about the 2020 election.
As soon as Trump sat down, Collins dived straight into 2020 and insisted that Trump’s first term “ended with a deadly riot at the Capitol” and that he had not “publicly acknowledged the 2020 election result.”
“Why should Americans put you back in the White House?” she then asked.
Of course, the reason the riot was “deadly” is because, at least in one case, a government footsoldier turned violent against those who entered the capitol building that day. Only two people died as a direct result of the incursion into the Capitol and both were members of the conservative protesters.
During the incursion, an unarmed Ashli Babbitt was brutally shot down by Capitol Hill Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd. And before that, Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old Trump supporter from Georgia, died outside the Capitol as people rushed toward the building. Officials said Boyland was “trampled to death” by the crowd, but later it was said she had a “medical complication” from medication.
Two other Trump supporters, Kevin Greeson, 55, and Benjamin Phillips, 50, died of heart attacks, and both already had previous illnesses.
Claims that a number of members of law enforcement died as a result of the incursion are likewise untrue. One, Officer Brian Sicknick, died of a heart attack the day after the event, and there is no proof whatever that it was as a result of the incursion. And several other officers committed suicide in the days following Jan. 6. There is a similar lack of any proof whatever that they took their own lives because of the riot.
Despite lies by Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only people who provably died as a direct result of the riot were Trump supporters.
Regardless, it seems to be the media that keeps dwelling on the past. Trump would probably have been perfectly happy to talk exclusively about the 2024 campaign, the coming primary campaign and his ideas for a second term. Instead, the media continued to dwell on the past.
And if that post-town hall panel is any indication, the mainstream media isn’t fooling anyone.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.