Already under fire from leftists over having platformed former President Donald Trump for a town hall, CNN is now facing backlash from conservatives over the town hall being chockablock with bias and false so-called “facts.”
Speaking on a CNN panel late Wednesday, shortly after the town hall concluded, Rep. Byron Donalds in particular slammed the network over the event’s moderator Kaitlan Collins’ biased line of questioning toward the former president.
Listen:
I am so impressed by Congressman @ByronDonalds. I mean, how good is he?!? Brilliant! https://t.co/fNOHiARXhs
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) May 11, 2023
“Town halls are for the voters, not for the press. Not for the person who’s the moderator. Kaitlan spent more time interjecting her own viewpoints or her own views on the situation,” he said, prompting pushback from CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“Excuse me, those are actually facts, though,” Cooper said, much to Donalds’ annoyance.
“Hold on. Are you guys now going to interject your views on me, or do I get a chance to speak now?” the GOP congressman said before continuing.
“The town hall is for the president to speak to the voters of New Hampshire, not for this back and forth with the media. That’s number one,” he said.
Donalds then detailed his second complaint, which he directed at CNN contributor Van Jones.
“Number two, with respect to Ukraine, I totally disagree. He did not say he was going to just give over Ukraine the way you intimate, Van. Van, what he said was he would actually look for a solution to end it quickly. He put 24 hours on it, but let’s be very clear: What Joe Biden’s done has been a disaster,” he said.
“Because initially with Ukraine, Joe Biden wanted to give Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ride out of Dodge. He wanted to give him a plane ride. And it wasn’t until people in Moscow, in Ukraine, here in the United States said this invasion is wrong that Joe Biden reversed course,” he added before being interrupted again.
“Do you want a victory in Ukraine?” Jones asked him.
“Hold on. Hold on. I’m just trying to respond to everything that’s been coming up at the table,” Donalds responded before continuing again.
“Last thing. Let me say this. We spent 22, 23 minutes talking about Jan. 6th. We could have been talking about a whole lot of other issues instead of doing that for the first half hour or so. But let me be very clear. What was said in this town hall by Kaitlan about National Guard troops that were authorized was wrong. I’m on the Oversight Committee. I was in two hearings on Jan. 6th,” he said.
“It was testified in Oversight that Donald Trump authorized National Guard troops on Jan. 4th. He followed up in the call with then-acting Secretary of Defense on Jan. 5th, trying to see where the deployment was on those troops. That’s testimony in the Oversight Committee. Everybody testified in the Oversight Committee when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House except one organization. And that was the Capitol Police. Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t allow that,” he added.
Cooper then cut in again to ostensibly fact-check him.
“Well, let me just correct you: What Kaitlan was saying was what the former secretary of defense wrote in his book,” he said.
“I’m telling you what he testified to under oath,” Donalds replied.
Another CNN panelist then asked the congressman whether he acknowledges that Trump lost the 2020 race. The congressman tried to reply by clueing in the panelists on the American people’s actual concerns but was quickly cut off again.
“Again, are we going to continue talking about 2020? Let me tell you why most voters are frankly kind of tired of ya’ll bringing this up: inflation, border …,” he said before being rudely interrupted again for the umpteenth time.
After the interruptions, Donalds continued again.
“Voters want to talk about inflation, the border, fentanyl, the debt ceiling, foreign policy. If you want to talk about the 2020 election, let’s talk about this: We do know that Marc Elias was in many jurisdictions suing to actually change election procedures, which by the way is at the hands of the state legislature in every state according to the Constitution. Not in the hands of the courts. Not in the hands of the Supreme Court. The state legislature. We do know that to be a fact,” he said.
He was right, and hilariously enough, CNN itself proved it. Following the town hall, the network held a panel with Trump-supporting town hall audience members, and what they had to say echoed what Donalds had said.
Listen:
During the back-and-forth exchange seen above, the moderator asked, “Does it bother you that [Trump] keeps talking about 2020 and not 2024? How do you feel about those lies?”
An audience member replied by reminding CNN that it was Collins who’d brought up the 2020 election first.
“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,” the audience member said.
Bingo …
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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