CNN Denies Making Deal To Host ‘More Trump Surrogates’ Amid Town Hall Controversy

CNN denied it reached an “understanding” with the Trump campaign to host “more Trump surrogates” ahead of their town hall event.

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.

The event did deliver double the viewers of competitors Fox News and MSNBC and quintupled CNN’s average audience in the time slot, but failed to beat President Joe Biden’s past CNN town halls — or Trump’s own past Fox News events.

Ahead of the town hall, Trump raised eyebrows with a social media post in which he wrote, “I’ll be doing CNN tomorrow night, LIVE from the Great State of New Hampshire, because they are rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again. They made me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!!”

At the time, CNN denied there was any deal, and Collins began the event by noting, “No questions are off the table, and we agreed to no conditions.”

A new piece by The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell contains a new gloss on the theme. Lowell’s Trumpworld sources claimed CNN reached an “understanding” with the campaign to host more Trump supporters on the air:

The former president was interested in doing a town hall mainly because it would give the campaign material to clip for social media. He was interested in doing it on CNN because the campaign reached an understanding – which a spokesperson denied – that it would book more Trump surrogates.

…

The campaign also made sure the pre- and post-town hall coverage featured Trump surrogates on air. Among the bookings: former Trump White House press aide Hogan Gidley, pro-Trump congressmen Brian Mast and Byron Donalds, as well as pro-Trump senator JD Vance.

A spokesperson for CNN denied that the network made any formal agreement to book surrogates as guests in order to host of the town hall.

When reached for comment by Mediaite, a CNN spokesperson said there was no “deal” and explicitly denied any sort of commitment to book more Trump surrogates.

CNN’s coverage of the town hall did include both pro-Trump CNN analyst David Urban and pro-Trump Florida Republican Congressman Byron Donalds, along with analysts like Van Jones, Maggie Haberman, and David Axelrod. Gidley and Vance appeared in pre-show coverage.

Lowell’s Trump sources also recounted a conversation between Trump and CNN chief Chris Licht in which Licht told Trump to “have a good conversation and have fun.”

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