Notorious hall monitor Oliver Darcy of CNN really didn't like that the network he works for took it upon themselves to host former president and front running GOP presidential contender Donald Trump, and he really didn't like that Trump did so well. He expressed this publicly, on the network that issues his paychecks, but his boss, Chris Licht, wasn't having it, according to Puck.
Licht was blasted by pundits and progressive politicians for having allowed Trump to speak at all as they claimed that essentially one of the biggest news outlets in the country should not give air time to the leading Republican presidential candidate for 2024, a man who already served 4 years as president and has major support among a broad swath of the American electorate.
"It's really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall," he wrote. "In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms. Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close." And of course, the town hall had "GREAT RATINGS," as Trump pointed out. He also noted that the whole thing was really triggering to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Licht apparently demanded that Darcy, and his editor Jon Passantino, attend a meeting "with himself and top executives in which they told him that his coverage of the Trump town hall had been too emotional."
"They put the fear of God into him," Puck reported.
Apparently they also, according to Puck, "stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate."
Dispassionate, however, had not been Darcy's take at all. In fact, he was absolutely beside himself when he wrote, in Reliable Sources, "it's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening." He emphasized that interviewer Kaitlan Collins, who acted more like a debater to Trump, was repeatedly interrupted by Trump, though it was she who was talking over him all night.
But for Darcy, his feelings were more important than any fact. He wrote that "It felt like 2016 all over again. It was Trump's unhinged social media feed brought to life on stage. And Collins was put in an uncomfortable position, given the town hall was conducted in front of a Republican audience that applauded Trump, giving a sense of unintended endorsement to his shameful antics."
And he claimed that Trump had taken advantage of the situation, and that "the nation's eyes were transfixed on Trump's abuse of the platform that he was given." Mostly what made Darcy so angry was that Trump spoke of his allegations that there was "election fraud" during the 2020 election.
The progressive left and their partisan pundits in the media class, however, are in for a world of hurt as the American people continue to express their preference for Donald Trump over creepy uncle Joe Biden and his destructive policies. While they would rather Trump disappear into a puff of smoke, wither and die, or simply go hide in the basement like Uncle Joe, Trump isn't going anywhere.
Darcy, AOC, and her "bad looking boyfriend" may try to shame networks into not covering Trump, but in the end, it is the American people who will decide, and the finger-wagging and breathless pearl-clutching of the triggered media elites will have to give way, again, and share space with Donald Trump.
