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      Fox News’s ‘vitriolic lies’ present clear threat to US democracy, says woman suing rightwing network

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      The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.Jankowicz resigned from the federal post on 18 May 2022, barely three weeks into the job.In an interview with the Guardian, she said her motive in suing Fox was to ensure accountability for what she alleged was a campaign of lies against her that undermined American democracy. “There needs to be consequences,” she said.“It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.”She added that what she claimed was Fox’s reckless disregard for the truth had implications for the future of the country. “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”Jankowicz was announced as the head of the new disinformation board on 27 April last year and was instantly engulfed in a tempest of rightwing anger. In the lawsuit, Jankowicz’s lawyers allege that the attacks skyrocketed the following day, after Fox News hosts began fuelling the hatred with unfounded claims about her desire to censor rightwing voices.One of the most vociferous critics, the complaint says, was Tucker Carlson, the news channel’s then primetime star who was fired by Fox last month in the wake of the Dominion settlement. In his opening monologue on 28 April, Carlson called Jankowicz a “moron”, said that what she was doing amounted to a “full-scale attack on free speech” and dubbed the disinformation board “the new Soviet America”.Other Fox hosts, including Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, followed suit, labelling her a “useful idiot”, “janko-half-witz” and “insane”. Hannity went so far as to depict her as “one of the biggest perpetrators and purveyors of disinformation in the entire country”.The Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade wondered why President Biden would give a pregnant woman such an “important job” – Jankowicz was eight months pregnant at the time.“I was weeks away from giving birth to my first kid when this was all happening,” Jankowicz told the Guardian. “That’s a time I will never get back.”The attacks continued long after she had resigned her federal position. As recently as last month, Ingraham returned to the fray; the Fox News host played a clip of Jankowicz describing the harassment she had endured and commented: “She’s just upset that she didn’t get to censor everybody”.As an authority on disinformation campaigns, Jankowicz said she could predict the cycle of events that unfolded. Whenever Fox hosts attacked her on air, a swarm of online hate would be directed at her culminating in multiple death threats.“Every time they talked about me on Fox, a new wave of harassment would start. I would get a spike especially when Carlson and Hannity mentioned me.”Many of the Fox attacks made a point of her gender, she said. “They were focused on belittling me, cutting me down to size – disregarding my serious work and the fact that I had been called as a Republican witness in Senate hearings – just to make me look like a silly little girl.”The new lawsuit adds to several legal actions piling up on Fox’s plate.In addition to Dominion’s $1.6bn suit, which alleged Fox had spread the lie that its voting machines helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, the media company is facing a separate action brought by another voting machine firm, Smartmatic.Carlson’s former booker, Abby Grossberg, is also suing Fox alleging its one-time star fostered an abusive workplace culture.Jankowicz faces a daunting mountain to climb in taking on the Murdoch empire. As a public figure holding an important federal role at the time of the alleged defamation, she must clear a very high legal standard.She must show that the broadcaster acted with “actual malice” in disseminating false statements about her that it knew were untrue, or that it showed “reckless disregard” in airing those statements without checking their veracity.The complaint claims that the channel mentioned more than 150 times that Jankowicz intended to monitor and censor free speech. In fact, the disinformation board had no powers to censor or surveil anyone, it was merely designed to co-ordinate the efforts of other government entities.“They depicted me as a fascist who didn’t stand up for free speech, when precisely standing up for free speech had been the purpose of my entire career,” she said.The lawsuit also points to Fox hosts saying she was fired from the board when she in fact resigned.The Guardian invited Fox to respond to the claim that it knowingly or recklessly broadcast untruths about Jankowicz. A Fox spokesperson said the company has moved to have the case relocated from the Delaware state court to a federal court, but did not respond to any of the specific allegations.Jankowicz is bringing the action with the help of a gofundme page which has so far raised almost $60,000 towards her legal fees. She said she was heartened by that support, but stressed that money was not her motive.“I’ve been cautioned time and time again that this might not be ‘worth it’ financially,” she said. “That’s not why I’m pursuing this.”Her aim she said was partly to show that individuals could also confront the powerful, not just businesses like Dominion and Smartmatic. “These companies have venture capital firms behind them, they can afford fancy lawyers and years-long trials to hold Fox to account. For individuals like me, it’s much harder – and I don’t believe that is something that our system can sustain.”By bringing the lawsuit, she runs the risk of potentially opening herself up to a renewed wave of criticism that she is attempting to limit free speech protected under the first amendment. The Guardian asked her whether suing for defamation was the best way to counter Fox’s alleged disinformation.Jankowicz stressed that she didn’t pursue the lawsuit lightly. “I don’t think anybody should pursue a lawsuit just because someone said something mean about them – I have a thick skin. But I believe Fox’s continued lies about individuals are a greater threat to free speech and democracy than a carefully considered, narrow lawsuit like mine.”She said her main aim was to force Fox to answer for what she called its false statements of facts. “That sort of coverage is not protected speech,” she said. “If Fox isn’t brought to account, they will not stop.” More

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      Christiane Amanpour criticises CNN decision to hold Trump town hall – video

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      The CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour said she strongly disagreed with her network’s decision to host a town hall event with Donald Trump last week and had had ‘a very robust exchange of views’ with Chris Licht, the chief executive under fire for approving and then defending the decision to stage it. ‘I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person’, but then that’s me, she said at Columbia Journalism School in New York. Trump called the CNN moderator, Kaitlan Collins, a ‘nasty person’, one of number of raucous moments during the event More

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      Philadelphia Inquirer severely disrupted by cyber-attack

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      The Philadelphia Inquirer is scrambling to restore its systems and resume normal operations after it became the latest major media organization to be targeted in a cyber-attack.With no regular Sunday newspaper and online stories also facing some delays, the cyber-attack has triggered the worst disruption to the Inquirer in decades.The attack aimed at Philadelphia’s paper of record has been reported to the FBI.Disruption to the Inquirer, the most read daily in Pennsylvania and the third-longest continuously serving newspaper in the US, comes as the city prepares for a mayoral primary election on Tuesday. The Inquirer’s offices are closed through at least Tuesday, and the company is looking for co-working space to serve as a makeshift newsroom for election night.It is unclear when normal editorial services will be restored.News organisations are increasingly being targeted by sophisticated cyber-attacks – as have government agencies, hospitals, universities and the business sector.In December, the Guardian was hit by a ransomware attack in which the personal data of staff in the UK and US was accessed. The print edition continued uninterrupted but the incident, which was probably triggered by a “phishing” attempt in which the victim is tricked – often through email – into downloading malware, forced the Guardian to close its offices for several months.The Los Angeles Times in 2018 was affected by a major ransomware attack in which a kind of malicious software that essentially paralyses a system – holding it to ransom – and demands payment to free the system.Few details about the attack on the Inquirer have been released to staff members or readers. It is unclear whether any personal data has been exposed, exactly which systems had been breached, or who was behind the attack and what motivations they had.In an email, the Inquirer’s publisher, Lisa Hughes. said “we are currently unable to provide an exact timeline” on when operations will be fully restored. “We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as we work to fully restore systems and complete this investigation as soon as possible.”Monday’s newspapers were printed albeit without any classified ads.The incident is the greatest publication disruption to the state’s largest news organisation since a blizzard shut operations down for two days in January 1996, the company said. More

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      CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

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      Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning.“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.”As it happens, quite a lot of people said that not only did CNN fail to get answers but it was repeating the terrible mistake of 2016 when it treated Trump as an entertainer not a hostile politician by giving him hours of airtime to spout freely because he was good for ratings, and therefore profits.One of CNN’s own reporters, Oliver Darcy, was less enthused than his boss.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he said in his daily newsletter, Reliable Sources.Darcy then listed all that was wrong. The same old “professional lie machine” that is Trump ignoring the question, talking over the moderator, unleashing “a firehose of disinformation upon the country”.“And CNN aired it all. On and on it went. It felt like 2016 all over again,” he wrote.More than a few Republicans shared that view. Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the George W Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, condemned the news network.“CNN was completely unprepared to hold Trump accountable. CNN has done a complete disservice to our democracy,” he wrote. “CNN, you failed journalism and our country.”The New York Times said Trump’s advisers were delighted: “They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”Which raises the question of how television, in particular, should cover Trump as the next election comes into focus. It’s a question even Fox News, which has fallen out with the former president, is now grappling with.Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC News’s Nightline, asked what the alternative is to television time for a leading contender for a return to the White House.“So no more live political events, because politicians can be nasty? Because politicians can tell lies?” he told the New York Times. “I’m not sure that news organisations should necessarily be in the business of making ideological judgments. Is he a legitimate object of news attention? You bet.”Bob Schieffer, the former CBS news anchor who moderated presidential debates, took much the same position.“We’re in the business of telling people who’s running for what and what they stand for,” he said.But many Americans wondered if it had to be in front of a supportive, jeering audience that evidently included a fair number of his “Make America great again” supporters with little to restrain his torrent of lies, distractions and evasions.Mark Lukasiewicz, former vice-president at NBC News, said of the programme that the mistake was to do it live: “Proving again: Live lying works. A friendly Maga crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punch lines – including re sex assault and January 6 – and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”Even Fox News recorded its most recent interviews with Trump.Writing in the Washington Post, Perry Bacon said CNN’s mistake was to say, in the words of its political director, David Chalian, that is it going to “treat Trump like any other presidential candidate”.“CNN should, of course, treat Trump differently from other candidates. His record of anti-democratic behavior makes him a much more dangerous potential president than other candidates,” wrote Bacon.“In 2016, the media not only played down Trump’s chances of winning, but also suggested Trump would not pursue the outlandish and far-right ideas that he was running on if he won. This attitude was summed up by an Atlantic article titled ‘Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally’. This perspective was entirely wrongheaded.”Part of the problem is that few journalists in the US, striving for ill-defined objectivity and almost invariably deferential to present and former presidents, are a match for a man who views the established norms of interviewing and discussion as a provocation. As Kaitlan Collins proved, as she tried, and failed, to contain Trump, even as he called her a “nasty woman” on her own air.Bacon is not alone in worrying that Trump will continue to exploit CNN’s desperation to win back at least some of the Maga voters it lost when the former president led chants of “CNN sucks” at his rallies.That’s certainly how Trump saw it, writing on his Truth Social site shortly before the programme that CNN was “rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again.“Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens?” he added.As it turned out, what was good for CNN and Trump was viewed by a large part of the rest of America as another disaster in the making. More

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      How should the media cover sexual predator Trump? – podcast

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      On Tuesday, a jury in New York found that the former president Donald Trump sexually abused magazine writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her by branding her a liar.
      On Wednesday, Trump made the same baseless claims about Carroll that led to him losing the case – this time, live on CNN to millions of viewers.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland talks to Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan about the fallout from the E Jean Carroll case. The pair discuss how the media should cover a 2024 presidential candidate who has been impeached twice, indicted by a federal court, and who is now legally defined as a sexual predator

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Fox News sued for defamation by ex-government disinformation chief

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      The former head of a disinformation group created by the US Department of Homeland Security has sued Fox News for defamation, saying its attacks threatened her safety.In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Nina Jankowicz alleged that multiple Fox News hosts spread lies about her work, fueling an internet campaign against her that ultimately led to her resignation and the disbandment of the group.Jankowicz was executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board, created to coordinate efforts to combat disinformation posing a threat to US security.The group was created in April 2022 but paused just three weeks later, after a barrage of conservative attacks. Jankowicz resigned and in August the group was shut down.Jankowicz’s lawsuit focuses on three claims she says Fox levied against her: that she intended to censor speech, that she was fired, and that she wanted to give verified Twitter users, including herself, the power to edit others’ tweets, a claim taken from a video clip used out of context.“Several of these falsehoods stand out as especially destructive – and directly contrary to available, verifiable evidence,” the lawsuit says.The lawsuit also says Fox hosts continuously attacked Jankowicz, calling her a “wicked witch”, a “disinformation czaress” and a “lunatic”, among other things.The suit adds: “Fox’s defamatory coverage has caused Jankowicz and her family immense suffering. Jankowicz has been doxxed, threatened, harassed and even cyber-stalked.“Threatening and harassing messages and social media posts are usually linked to Fox’s coverage of Jankowicz and nearly always premised on Fox’s false statement that Jankowicz intends to police online speech.”Speaking to the New York Times, Jankowicz, 34, said Fox News used her as a “punching bag” even after her resignation and the closure of the Disinformation Governance Board.“It shouldn’t be something we just accept,” she said, “that the most powerful cable network in the world can attack individuals willy-nilly and not face any consequences after they ruin their lives.”Fox did not comment to the Times or immediately respond to Guardian inquiries.Jankowicz’s lawsuit references the recently settled $1.6bn defamation suit between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, saying the network’s “commitment to stay the course even as readily available information contracted statements of fact made on Fox’s platform” can be seen in both cases.Before the Dominion case was settled, internal communications in court filings revealed that Fox hosts and executives knew Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen election were false but did not stop their broadcast.Last month, Fox and Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement. Fox did not air an apology, though it did acknowledge “court rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”.Fox faces other lawsuits, including a $2.7bn claim from another voting machine company, Smartmatic, and a suit filed by a former producer for the now fired host Tucker Carlson, who accuses the network of sexism and trying to use her as a scapegoat in the Dominion case.Fox has said the former producer’s claims are “riddled with false allegations”. It has called the Smartmatic suit “outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis”. More

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      CNN head defends Trump’s lie-strewn town hall: ‘America was served very well’

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      CNN bosses have defended their decision to host a primetime town hall with Donald Trump, after triggering widespread outrage by allowing the former president to spout lies and disinformation on subjects from sexual assault to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Addressing staff anger over the decision to host the New Hampshire event, the CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, saluted what he called a “masterful performance” by Kaitlan Collins, the anchor who attempted to cope with Trump’s lies and abusive comments in front of a raucous Republican audience.On an internal call, Licht reportedly told staffers: “You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.“Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news … Made a lot of news, [and] that is our job.”Before the town hall, CNN said it was hosting Trump because he is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden in the presidential election next year.After the event, in a Thursday statement, the network said it had acted “to get answers and hold the powerful to account”.But CNN saw widespread criticism for hosting the twice-impeached former president, who is under investigation for a litany of alleged crimes and civil offenses.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges over a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. This week, he was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E Jean Carroll.He also faces state and federal investigations for election subversion, federal scrutiny of his retention of classified information and a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs.Licht took over at CNN last year and has faced criticism for pursuing changes in staffing and tone. His comments on Thursday were reported by Brian Stelter, a media commentator and anchor who Licht pushed out of the network.Licht reportedly said: “While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story.”At St Anselm’s College in Manchester, members of an audience of Republican voters clapped when Trump denied assaulting Carroll and mocked her as a “whack job”, a day after he was found liable for assaulting and defaming her and was ordered to pay her around $5m.When Trump denied taking three hours to tell supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 to to go home, audience members applauded.When Trump called Collins “nasty” and said she did not know what she was talking about, audience members laughed.Licht reportedly told staffers the audience in New Hampshire, the state which will host the first Republican primary, represented “a large swath of America”, a reality US media missed in 2016, when Trump shocked Hillary Clinton to become president.According to Stelter, Licht also said covering Trump would “continue to be messy and tricky, but it’s our job”, adding: “America was served very well by what we did last night.”Stelter said: “Many CNN employees strongly disagree.”One employee, the reporter Oliver Darcy, began the Reliable Sources newsletter he inherited from Stelter with stern words for his own network.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy wrote.Calling Collins “as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come”, Darcy pointed to how she “fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall” … repeating “that there was no evidence for the lies he was disseminating on stage.“… Yet … Trump frequently ignored or spoke over Collins as he unleashed a firehose of disinformation upon the country, which a sizable swath of [Republicans] continue to believe.”Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, pointed to CNN’s retreat from the adversarial stance it maintained throughout Trump’s presidency.He said: “Is anyone surprised by what we saw? If you are, you weren’t watching the last eight years. Thanks again to CNN, who helped get us into this in 2016, and is now helping us get deeper into this in 2023.”Galen also said Collins “probably tried the best she could, given the circumstances”.But the anchor was not universally praised, critics pointing for example to her failure to correct or challenge Trump’s comments on abortion, including claiming Democrats support abortion at nine months and killing babies after they are born.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told MSNBC his party’s “position on reproductive freedom is very clear. We support a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive decisions. And it’s unfortunate that [Trump] was allowed to repeat those lies repeatedly without it being questioned, including by anyone in the audience, which was very disturbing.”In a statement on Thursday, a CNN spokesperson said: “Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist.“She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner.“That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”Not all observers said CNN was wrong. Jon Ralston, chief executive of the Nevada Independent, said on Twitter: “I still believe CNN should have put Trump on, and Kaitlan Collins did her best.“But for every interview, you have to have a strategy. She didn’t, and that’s why it was a farce. You have to be willing to ignore the audience … and interrupt him and call out every lie.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive congresswoman from New York, called the decision to host Trump “profoundly irresponsible”.Referring to Carroll, she told MSNBC: “What we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk … in front of a national audience and I could not have disagreed with it more. It was shameful.” More

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      Trump repeats conspiracy theories and election lies in CNN town hall

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      Donald Trump appeared at a CNN town hall on Wednesday night to unleash a litany of lies about the 2020 election and E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, just one day after a New York jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.Trump took questions from a friendly crowd of Republican and undeclared voters in New Hampshire, who often greeted the former president’s divisive comments and gestures toward moderator Kaitlan Collins with laughter and applause.Trump offered his thoughts on everything from the debt ceiling to abortion access and the war in Ukraine, but he frequently deflected when asked to outline specific policy objectives if he takes back the White House next year.The town hall turned combative as soon as it began, with Trump reiterating his lies about the 2020 election as Collins repeatedly interjected.Pressed by Collins on whether he would acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, Trump refused to do so. When Collins later asked if he would accept the results of the 2024 election regardless of the outcome, Trump replied, “Yeah, if I think it’s an honest election, absolutely.”Collins appeared to grow exasperated as the 70-minute town hall drew on, telling Trump at one point, “The election was not rigged, Mr President. You can’t keep saying that all night long.”Turning to Trump’s many legal liabilities, she asked the former president for his message to voters who argue that the verdict in Carroll’s lawsuit should disqualify him from seeking office. On Tuesday, a New York jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll 27 years earlier, ordering the former president to pay her $5m in damages for her battery and defamation claims.Trump responded by attacking Carroll as a “whack job” and raising baseless doubts about the objectivity of the judge who oversaw the case. The New Hampshire crowd welcomed Trump’s offensive and often untrue statements, and some audience members laughed when Collins noted that the former president had been found liable for sexual abuse.The verdict in Carroll’s case came a month after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in connection to a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election. He also faces potential criminal charges in Georgia and Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Asked why he had refused to voluntarily deliver the requested documents to federal authorities, Trump replied by calling Collins as a “nasty person”, echoing his characterization of former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman” in 2016.Meanwhile, Trump often shied away from offering a direct response to policy questions. Asked whether he would sign a federal abortion ban, he replied, “I’m looking at a solution that’s going to work. Very complex issue for the country. You have people on both sides of an issue, but we are now in a very strong position. Pro-life people are in a strong position to make a deal that’s going to be good and going to be satisfactory for them.”Trump would similarly not state whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, which launched an unprovoked invasion last year. “I want everybody to stop dying,” Trump said. “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done. I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”The few policy positions that Trump did clearly articulate may be unpopular with a wide swath of the American electorate. Trump said he was “inclined to pardon many” of those convicted for their participation in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He also discouraged congressional Republicans from approving an increase in the government’s debt ceiling, which could soon cause a disastrous federal default.“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive [spending] cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” Trump said. “I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave.”Trump’s position represents a reversal from his stance during his presidency, when he repeatedly suspended the debt ceiling to allow the government to continue borrowing money. Asked why he had changed his tune, Trump replied, “Because now I’m not president.”The flippant comment was met with laughter and applause, underscoring the former president’s enduring hold on the Republican base. Despite his many legal challenges, Trump remains the frontrunner in polls of the Republican primary field.A number of commentators who had criticized CNN for agreeing to host the town hall cited the contentious nature of the conversation and the audience’s positive reaction to Trump’s lies as confirmation of the network’s poor judgement.“CNN should be ashamed of themselves,” progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. “They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”But CNN defended its decision, arguing voters deserved the opportunity to hear from the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary.“Our job, despite his unique circumstances, is to do what we do best,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday morning. “Ask tough questions, follow up and hold him accountable to give voters the information they need to sort through their choices. That is our role and our responsibility.”Biden appeared to have watched the town hall, as he sent out a fundraising request once the event concluded.“It’s simple, folks,” Biden said on Twitter. “Do you want four more years of that?” More