Trump Campaign Mocking CNN Town Hall As ‘Trump Infomercial’ And ‘In-Kind Campaign Contribution’

Trump campaign staffers are ecstatically mocking CNN’s town hall with ex-President Donald Trump as a series of “Trump infomercials” and an “in-kind campaign contribution,” according to Trumpworld sources.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins moderated a CNN town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire Wednesday night that devolved into a chaotic spectacle of attacks, falsehoods, and abuse that sparked a barrage of criticism and recriminations at the network.

A new piece by The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell offers a deep dive into the town hall from the perspective of Lowell’s Trumpworld sources. The thrust of the piece is that the campaign was delighted by the event, and is taunting CNN over the triumph they feel the network delivered:

Trump’s advisers saw the town hall ultimately as a strategic win for the former president, who revelled in playing off the live audience of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in New Hampshire, which is hosting the first 2024 GOP presidential primary, and talked over the CNN moderator, Kaitlan Collins, as she tried to factcheck him in real time.

Afterwards, Trump allies joked that the event in their eyes amounted to an hour of Trump infomercials and should be recorded as an in-kind campaign contribution, and that Trump’s nearest rival for the nomination, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, would be crushed in a similar debate.

The famously ratings-obsessed Trump boasted about the viewing audience for the event, which did deliver double the viewers of competitors Fox News and MSNBC and quintupled CNN’s average audience in the time slot.

But the ratings were not as strong as President Joe Biden’s past CNN town halls — or Trump’s own past Fox News events. And ex-CNN host Brian Stelter noted on Twitter that “One day after the Trump town hall drew 3+ million viewers to CNN, the network returned to its usual ratings levels on Thursday, averaging 538,000 viewers in prime time. No ‘retention,’ in TV parlance, from the night before.”

On the other hand, the clips from the event will persist for the Trump campaign — and for Biden’s as well. One Democratic campaign advisor said of the town hall “It was quite efficient. Weeks worth of damning content in one hour.”

Have a tip for us? tips@mediaite.com