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      The Week in Business: Trump on TV

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      Giulio BonaseraWhat’s Up? (May 7-13)CNN’s TrumpcastUntil last week, former President Donald J. Trump had not appeared on CNN since 2016. But at a town hall hosted by the network on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential campaign, resumed the lies and name-calling that marked his presidency. Answering questions from the anchor Kaitlan Collins, he repeated misinformation about the 2020 election, called the writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a suit accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation, a “wack job” and derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person.” When Ms. Collins tried to correct Mr. Trump’s lies, he often talked over her. The largely sympathetic audience cheered him on throughout the evening. Critics of CNN’s forum said it was reckless to give Mr. Trump such a large platform for his message, especially because it proved difficult to fact check his statements in real time. The chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, defended the broadcast on Thursday, saying it underscored that covering Mr. Trump would “continue to be messy and tricky.”Inflation Is SlowingA closely watched report on Wednesday showed that inflation in the United States had reached a noteworthy milestone: April was the 10th straight month that the pace of price increases slowed. The Consumer Price Index climbed 4.9 percent from a year earlier, surpassing analysts’ expectations — in a good way. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast a 5 percent climb. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel costs, also fell slightly. The report comes on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s 10th consecutive increase to its benchmark rate. The latest inflation data, along with other signs of a slowdown in the economy, could make the May increase the last one for now. Elon Musk’s AnnouncementElon Musk long ago asked users on Twitter if he should step down as chief executive of the platform. “I will abide by the results of this poll,” he said. The results came in: Almost 58 percent of the 17.5 million people who voted agreed that Mr. Musk should leave his post. But it was still somewhat surprising when Mr. Musk announced on Friday that he had chosen his replacement: He said his successor would be Linda Yaccarino, the chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. Mr. Musk said Ms. Yaccarino, who recently interviewed him onstage at an advertising event in Miami, would focus on business operations while he would continue to work on product design and technology.Giulio BonaseraWhat’s Next? (May 14-20)Senate Hearings on the Banking CrisisTwo groups that have sought to blame each other for the recent bank failures will appear at a pair of Senate hearings this week — the heads of those banks and the federal regulators who oversee them. On Tuesday, Greg Becker, the former chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank, who stepped down from his post after the bank’s collapse in March, will testify before the Senate Banking Committee. Two former top executives from Signature Bank, which failed two days later, will also testify. They are expected to meet a harsh reception from lawmakers. In a letter summoning Mr. Becker to appear, the chairman of the committee wrote, “You must answer for the bank’s downfall.” Regulators can expect a grilling, too, at a separate hearing on Thursday. When regulators appeared before the committee last month, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle faulted shortcomings in oversight for the banking crisis. Regulators also pointed the finger at the banks’ mismanagement.More Turmoil at FoxDominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News, which was settled for $787.5 million in April, may have been only the opening salvo in a long fight to hold the network accountable for airing misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. Last week, Nina Jankowicz, a prominent specialist in Russian disinformation and online harassment, filed a new defamation suit accusing Fox of spreading lies about her that led to serious threats to her safety and harm to her career. That’s not Fox’s only legal trouble. It still faces a defamation suit from another election technology company, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, the network’s star host who was recently ousted and is still under contract, has said he is starting his own show on Twitter, a sign that negotiations to reach an amicable separation with the network have broken down.Report Cards for Big Box StoresWalmart and Target, two of the country’s largest retailers, will release their quarterly earnings reports this week, providing a glimpse at how inflation — which is falling but persistent — is affecting consumers. For the three months that ended in January, Walmart reported that its revenue was 7.3 percent higher than a year earlier and said December was its best month for sales at its U.S. stores in its history. But the company warned of dimmer prospects for the rest of the fiscal year, suggesting that consumers’ ability to absorb higher prices could be approaching its limit. Other retailers struck similar downbeat notes, suggesting that they expected conditions to worsen in the coming months.What Else?Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a gender bias suit accusing the bank of hindering women’s career advancement and paying them less than their male colleagues. Disney, in its quarterly earnings report last week, said that it had narrowed its streaming losses but that revenue from its old-line TV channels had fallen sharply. And Peloton said it was recalling more than two million exercise bikes because of reports of a faulty part. More

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      We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About the Trump Town Hall

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      As a former executive of Fox News, I never expected to write this: CNN performed a valuable journalistic service this week by hosting a spirited town hall with Donald Trump.Like it or not, Mr. Trump is one of the two people who are most likely to win the presidency next year. He should be questioned by journalists at every opportunity, whether those be news conferences, live interviews, taped interviews, debates and, yes, town halls. Far too often, presidential candidates stick to scripted events, safe audiences and saturation advertising; days, even weeks, go by with a candidate — or a sitting president — not facing a single tough question.We’ve heard a lot of naysayers deriding the recent town hall or even the idea of mainstream media interviews with Mr. Trump as “platforming” a monster. Monster or not, Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination (he is about 30 points ahead of his nearest rival) and a central figure in some of the most high-profile political and legal debates in this country. Are we better off as a society if, after shunting Mr. Trump into his own MAGA bubble, we wake up in November 2024 and find that he has been elected president?With the first Republican primary debate scheduled for August, we need to confront this and some other uncomfortable questions now. Is American democracy so fragile that we cannot metabolize the outlandish views of a presidential candidate? If a candidate is the subject of serious investigations, shouldn’t the news media ask him about that? Are our ideas of journalism so degraded that providing airtime to a candidate is tantamount to an endorsement?When a reporter holds a politician’s feet to the fire by asking him tough questions, that does not mean she or the network endorses the politician’s answers. We need to reflect on why televising a town hall with a leading candidate, no matter how abhorrent he is to a portion of the country, could inspire not just outrage at his performance but also fundamental questions about a television network’s decision to host the candidate. The Constitution does not bar Mr. Trump from running and our democracy does not bar him from running — yet CNN should not ask him tough questions?Since the 1960 debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, television networks have played a role in our country’s politics. Television is second only to the internet in its ability to concentrate the country’s attention. The United States is a mature democracy. We must trust voters to assess candidates and the media to provide more, not less, information.Some Democrats think that Mr. Trump’s performance at the town hall will hurt him among swing voters, making it less likely that he will win in 2024. That may be so: Many swing voters have spent less time thinking about Mr. Trump these last two years because they don’t obsess about politics like partisans do. So it was a journalistic service to interrogate Mr. Trump’s brand of politics in a forum that allowed voters to assess the former president.I have spent a lot of time thinking about what motivates Americans to vote, and I wonder if there’s more driving the hyperventilating about the town hall than just providing a platform to a monster. Could Democrats be worried that Mr. Trump’s brio and showmanship might strike a chord with some voters? Could Mr. Trump’s performance remind some independents that while they may not be overtly pro-Trump, they are more than a little anti-anti-Trump?Having spent part of my career helping prepare news anchors to question presidential candidates in debates and town halls, I tip my hat to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Under enormous pressure, Ms. Collins kept her composure and, crucially, never made it about herself. Furthermore, she elicited responses from the candidate that made news on topics from abortion to Ukraine.Mindful of Ms. Collins’s strong performance, critics have instead focused their ire on the town hall format, lamenting that it allowed Republican audience members to cheer on Mr. Trump’s insults and falsehoods. But not all the people in the room were pro-Trump — just the noisy ones. Besides, news organizations have been using town hall formats for years, rightfully reasoning that it’s important for candidates to hear from likely primary voters.Should we ban all town halls because the audience might side with the candidate? Should we ban live interviews because it’s too difficult to fact-check a candidate in real time? Or should we just ban Donald Trump altogether and get it over with, as many of his critics would prefer?We should do none of these things. That would be a journalistic disservice to a pluralistic society and electorate that is entrusted with listening, assessing and judging our leaders. Town halls like this one help Americans to think for themselves. It wasn’t so long ago that journalists were able to report hard truths and conduct tough interviews without worrying about upsetting some segment of their viewers. CNN deserves a lot of credit for attempting to return to a baseline that I always considered Journalism 101, but which now feels downright old-fashioned.Bill Sammon is the former managing editor of the Washington bureau of Fox News.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Chris Licht of CNN Defends Decision to Host Trump Town Hall

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      “People woke up, and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before,” Chris Licht said in a morning call at the network.The chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, issued a robust defense on Thursday of his decision to broadcast a live town hall with former President Donald J. Trump, an unruly and at times bewildering event that has prompted criticism inside and outside of the network.On a network-wide editorial call, Mr. Licht congratulated the moderator, Kaitlan Collins, on “a masterful performance” before acknowledging the public backlash. “We all know covering Donald Trump is messy and tricky, and it will continue to be messy and tricky, but it’s our job,” Mr. Licht said, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.“I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night,” Mr. Licht added. “People woke up, and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before. And if someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, it damn well should be on CNN.”The town hall, which aired in prime-time on Wednesday, featured Mr. Trump deploying a fusillade of falsehoods, sometimes too quickly for the moderator to intercept. It was a preview of what American journalism can expect from a 2024 campaign with the former president, who despite his ubiquity in political life has rarely appeared on mainstream TV outside of Fox News since leaving office.If the 2016 campaign showed that many Americans could not agree on common facts, the Babel-like nature of Wednesday’s New Hampshire town hall suggested that voters now occupied wholly different universes. Mr. Trump repeated a web of conspiracies about a stolen election and the “beautiful day” of the Capitol riot, language that was likely to befuddle half the viewing audience and resonate as gospel with the rest.“The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” Ms. Collins said at one point. “You cannot keep saying that all night long.” (He kept saying it.)The live audience, a group of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters, often cheered him on, even when he derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person.”“While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story,” Mr. Licht said on Thursday, “because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America. And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist. Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists.”Critics said it was reckless for the network to provide a live forum to Mr. Trump, given his track record of spreading disinformation. Even the network’s own commentators appeared taken aback by what had transpired on its airwaves. “We don’t have enough time to fact check every lie he told,” Jake Tapper told viewers on Wednesday night.The town hall was watched by 3.3 million people, according to Nielsen, a significant increase from CNN’s typical audience on an average weeknight at 8 p.m. That was slightly more than the average viewership for Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, which was seen by an average of 3.2 million people in the first three months of the year.Mr. Licht, who took over CNN last year after the network was acquired by Warner Bros. Discovery, has had a rocky tenure, and some journalists there have bristled at his public comments that the network had veered too far into an anti-Trump stance when Mr. Trump was in the White House. Mr. Licht has said CNN must appeal to more centrists and conservative voters, a strategy that has support from his corporate superiors.There were signs on Thursday that frustration inside CNN about the town hall was bubbling up. The network’s own media newsletter, “Reliable Sources,” published a tough assessment after the event, noting, “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.”The newsletter cited several critical posts on social media about the forum, including some people who faulted the network for choosing a town hall-style format where voters were free to cheer Mr. Trump and jeer Ms. Collins, the moderator.CNN said it selected the audience members in the same manner as it had for past candidate forums. A network team traveled to New Hampshire and coordinated with community groups, faith-based organizations, local Republican officials and the student government at Saint Anselm College, which hosted the event.CNN said the aim was to fill the auditorium with citizens representing a range of conservative views, but the network declined to identify specific groups that were consulted, saying it did not want activists trying to game the system at future events.In keeping with past network practice, the Trump campaign was provided invitations for about 20 guests to attend the town hall, although these guests were not allowed to ask questions of the candidate. Officials at Saint Anselm College were allowed to invite about 70 people. The total audience was 300 to 350 people.In the days leading up to the town hall, Ms. Collins prepared with the team in New Hampshire extensively, according to a person familiar with the matter, going over potential falsehoods Mr. Trump might utter onstage. Mr. Licht gave feedback, and Mr. Trump was played in mock debates by Mark Preston, CNN’s vice president of political and special events programming,Mr. Licht’s decision to select Ms. Collins for the high-profile assignment underscored her rising prominence as an on-air anchor at CNN. The network is finalizing a multiyear contract with Ms. Collins that will make her the anchor of CNN’s currently vacant 9 p.m. hour, according to three people with knowledge of talks. That hour is a crucial time slot for advertisers, and Ms. Collins’s recent tryout in that time-slot last month drew favorable ratings.Puck earlier reported that Ms. Collins was nearing a deal with CNN.Ms. Collins’s deal, combined with Don Lemon’s recent ouster from CNN, means that the network will have to retool its morning show. The network is looking for new co-hosts to pair with Poppy Harlow, Ms. Collins’s co-anchor on “CNN This Morning.”Some CNN critics had asserted that the network cut away early from the Trump event, which ended around 9:10 p.m. In fact, the event was always intended to last an hour or so, with a panel of analysts ready in a studio to take over coverage at the start of the 9 p.m. hour. More

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      A ‘Rude and Inaccurate’ Trump at the CNN Town Hall

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      More from our inbox:George Santos and Republican Profiles in Cowardice‘Anxious Nation’: A 14-Year-Old Cast Member Speaks OutInformal ConnectionsReporters at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., watched the live CNN town hall in a separate room at the event on Wednesday.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Repeats False Election Claims at CNN Event” (news article, May 11):Thank you for your thorough and factual reporting on Wednesday’s CNN town hall with former President Donald Trump. You summarized each of the mischaracterizations, exaggerations and untruths spoken by Mr. Trump in your Fact Check and related articles.Unfortunately, it’s likely that many right-leaning voters drawn to watch the town hall will not be inclined to read them. Likewise, the studio audience for the show, evidently chosen to represent Trump supporters, won’t realize or doesn’t care about the damage his rude and inaccurate statements do to the body politic of our country.CNN made a grievous mistake following through with its plan to air the program after the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case was announced on Tuesday.Mr. Trump benefited greatly from the undiscriminating and constant coverage of his untruths in the 2016 election. It’s time for responsible print and television journalists to pull the plug and refuse to provide a platform for Mr. Trump’s lies and vulgarity.Jim LinsellTraverse City, Mich.To the Editor:I think it was appropriate for CNN to invite Donald Trump to appear at its town hall. The former president, after all, is the leading candidate for the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties.I don’t subscribe to the philosophy held by some of the louder voices in the media that “I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death my right to prevent you from saying it.”If there was a problem with Wednesday night’s broadcast it was the format. Specifically, making the host, Kaitlan Collins, function as both the facilitator of the event’s question-and-answer framework and the fact checker for Mr. Trump’s responses. Being effective in one of those roles is challenging enough; doing both is impossible.John E. StaffordRye, N.Y.To the Editor:Re “The MAGA King, Back in Prime Time” (Opinion, May 10):Michelle Cottle, in her defense of CNN’s decision to air a town hall with Donald Trump, doesn’t mention an important point.The problem is not just that the network is giving a platform to a man who tried to overthrow our democratic process. CNN is also giving him more airtime than his challengers, which is what got us into this mess in the first place.From the moment Donald Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, the cable networks gave him unprecedented free coverage — cementing his status as a serious candidate in a way no other presidential hopeful had ever been treated.The election is more than a year away, and already Mr. Trump is manipulating the media, pitting Fox against CNN and grabbing an hour’s worth of prime time.To Ms. Cottle’s most important question: No, we have learned nothing.Betty J. CotterShannock, R.I.George Santos and Republican Profiles in CowardiceRepresentative George Santos, leaving federal court in Central Islip, N.Y., after his arraignment on Wednesday.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Santos Is Indicted as Inquiry Claims 3 Finance Schemes” (front page, May 11):It was satisfying to read of George Santos being charged, especially after enduring months of his smug defiance. Mr. Santos doesn’t represent New York’s Third District; he represents the worst type of person — one who lies to get ahead, one who preys upon the less fortunate, one who cheats the system.That such a fraud should help decide the laws of our nation is appalling. Mr. Santos doesn’t serve his constituents; he serves himself. And in his refusal to admit to his alleged fraud, he serves as the epitome of political cowardice.Not surprisingly, House Republican leaders have shown their own political cowardice in winking at Mr. Santos’s bad behavior, even as he’s taken to task for it, in an effort to maintain their tight majority.I applaud House Republicans who have called for Mr. Santos’s resignation and encourage more to follow suit. In “Profiles in Courage,” John F. Kennedy wrote, “Not all Senators would agree — but few would deny that the desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on independent courage.”Would that more members of Congress could depress the accelerator.Gary J. WhiteheadNorwood, N.J.To the Editor:Re “Santos Pushed Campaign Money Abuse Past the Usual Line,” by David Firestone (Opinion, May 11):Mr. Firestone writes that George Santos’s alleged scheme to funnel money to himself through a 501(c)(4) organization was “spectacularly dumb.” In fact, it was brilliant and would have succeeded if he hadn’t made the mistake of actually getting elected to Congress.Frauds are discovered because the victim eventually figures out what is going on. In the case of misappropriated election contributions, contributors virtually never check whether the contributions actually went to the campaign, and indeed they didn’t here. If he had not been elected, The New York Times would have never checked his assertions, contributors would not have complained and prosecutors would have never investigated.If Mr. Santos had lost, as he may have intended, he could have walked away with the money.James FogelBronxThe writer is a former chief of the Frauds Bureau of the Manhattan district attorney’s office and a former judge of the New York City Criminal Court.‘Anxious Nation’: A 14-Year-Old Cast Member Speaks OutKameron Johnson as seen in the documentary “Anxious Nation.”Anxious Nation/Area 23a/Lasega FilmsTo the Editor:Re “Anxious Nation” (movie review, May 5):I’m a 14-year-old cast member of “Anxious Nation.” This film is much more than talking to “a handful of struggling teenagers and some of their parents.” Over four years, we made a brave decision to share our struggles with mental health to help others who are struggling too.I found your use of the word “tantrums” especially upsetting. The raw videos you see are real panic attacks. Not “tantrums.” Panic attacks that kids as young as 3 are having.I know this. That is me. Parents don’t realize or understand it.The courage displayed throughout the film is extraordinary and deserves to be acknowledged. It’ll give families a tool to learn from. It’ll give kids my age someone to relate to, and that’s so dear to my heart. I didn’t have that growing up.You are entitled to your opinion of “Anxious Nation,” but to steer away families who really need this film feels wrong and irresponsible.Families need this. My generation is in a crisis.Seveann MortonCardiff, Calif.Informal ConnectionsThe Brookdale Park dog owners have become real friends beyond the park, going to dinner, movies and comedy shows together.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “They Know Your Face, Maybe Not Your Name” (The New Old Age, Science Times, April 25):I worked for a company I loved for 13 years, and the last year I was there, I stopped every morning at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to the office. On my final day of work, I went there as usual and told them of the occasion.As the Dunkin’ staff all wished me well, I was on the verge of tears (and simultaneously laughing about crying) as I carried the coffee to my car. It made me truly appreciate the importance of those informal connections we encounter as part of our daily lives.Amy S. RichOrange, Conn. More

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      Five Takeaways From Trump’s Unruly CNN Town Hall

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      Donald Trump is still Donald Trump.His 70 minutes onstage in New Hampshire served as a vivid reminder that the former president has only one speed, and that his second act mirrors his first. He is, as ever, a celebrity performance artist and, even out of office, remains the center of gravity in American politics.CNN’s decision to give him an unfiltered prime-time platform was a callback to the 2016 campaign, even as the moderator, Kaitlan Collins, persistently interjected to try to cut him off or correct him.Mr. Trump was so focused on discussing and defending himself that he barely touched on President Biden’s record — which people close to Mr. Trump want him to focus on. But he was disciplined when it came to his chief expected primary rival.Here are five takeaways.Trump won’t let go of his lies about 2020 or Jan. 6If viewers were expecting Mr. Trump to have moved on from his falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from him, he demonstrated once again, right out of the gate, that he very much hasn’t.The first questions asked by Ms. Collins were about Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020, and his false claims of fraud.“I think that, when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens,” Mr. Trump said, calling the election he lost “rigged.”Mr. Trump later said he was “inclined” to pardon “many” of the rioters arrested on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob during certification of President Biden’s Electoral College win. His avoidance of an unequivocal promise pleased people close to him.He also came armed with a list of his own Twitter posts and statements from that day — an idea that was his, a person familiar with the planning said. He lied about his inaction that day as Ms. Collins pressed him about what he was doing during the hours of violence. And he said he did not owe Vice President Mike Pence, whose life was threatened by the mob, an apology.As time has worn on, Mr. Trump has increasingly wrapped his arms around what took place at the Capitol and incorporated it into his campaign. Wednesday night was no exception.“A beautiful day,” he said of Jan. 6.It was a reminder that embracing the deadly violence of that day — at least for Republicans — is no longer seen as disqualifying. Privately, Mr. Trump’s team said they were happy with how he handled the extensive time spent on the postelection period during the town hall.The G.O.P. audience stacked the deck, but revealed where the base isThe audience’s regular interruptions on behalf of Mr. Trump were like a laugh track on a sitcom. It built momentum for him in the room — and onscreen for the television audience — and stifled Ms. Collins as she repeatedly tried to interrupt him with facts and correctives.No matter how vulgar, profane or politically incorrect Mr. Trump was, the Republican crowd in New Hampshire audibly ate up the shtick of the decades-long showman.He would pardon a “large portion” of Jan. 6 rioters. Applause.He mocked the detailed accusations of rape from E. Jean Carroll as made up “hanky-panky in a dressing room.” Laughter. No matter that a New York jury held him liable for sexual abuse and defamation this week, awarding Ms. Carroll $5 million in damages.Calling Ms. Carroll a “wack job.” Applause and laughs.Flip-flopping on using the debt ceiling for leverage, because “I’m not president.” More laughs.The cheers revealed the current psyche of the Republican base, which is eager for confrontation: with the press, with Democrats, with anyone standing in the way of Republicans taking power.It made for tough sledding for Ms. Collins, who was like an athlete playing an away game on hostile turf: She had to battle the crowd and the candidate simultaneously.“You’re a nasty person,” Mr. Trump said to her at one point, echoing the line he used against Hillary Clinton in 2016.The town-hall format felt like a set piece for Mr. Trump that he leveraged to cast himself as both the putative Republican incumbent — “Mister president,” he was repeatedly addressed as — and the outsider, recreating conditions from his two previous campaigns.Republicans cheered, but so did Democrats looking to the general electionPresident Biden’s team had changed the televisions on Air Force One from CNN to MSNBC as he returned from New York on Wednesday evening. But that didn’t mean his political team was not eagerly watching the town hall unfold, and cheering along with the Republican audience.Mr. Trump defended Jan. 6 as a “beautiful day.” He hailed the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a “great victory.” He wouldn’t say if he hoped Ukraine would win the war against Russia. He talked again about how the rich and famous get their way. “Women let you,” he said. And he refused to rule out reimposing one of the most incendiary and divisive policies of his term in office: purposefully separating families at the border.Mr. Trump’s answers played well in the hall but could all find their way into Democratic messaging in the next 18 months.Late Wednesday, the Biden campaign was already figuring out what segments could be turned quickly into digital ads, seeing Mr. Trump staking out positions that would turn off the kind of swing voters that Mr. Biden won in 2020.Shortly after the event ended, Mr. Biden issued a tweet. “Do you want four more years of that?” it read. It was a request for donations. It was also a reminder how much of the Biden 2024 campaign is likely to be about Mr. Trump.Trump aggressively dodged taking a stance on a federal abortion banMr. Trump is perhaps the single Republican most responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. He appointed three of the court’s justices who powered the majority opinion. But he has privately blamed abortion politics for Republican underperformance in the 2022 midterms and has treaded carefully in the early months of his 2024 run.Before the town hall, his team spent considerable time honing his answer to a question they knew he would be asked: Would he support a federal ban, and at how many weeks?His repeated dodges and euphemisms were hard to miss on Wednesday.“Getting rid of Roe v. Wade was an incredible thing for pro-life,” he began.That was about as specific as he would get. He said he was “honored to have done what I did” — a line Democrats had quickly flagged as potential fodder for future ads — and that it was a “great victory.”Mr. Trump’s Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis, recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, getting to Mr. Trump’s right on an issue that could resonate with evangelical voters. Mr. Trump did not even mention Mr. DeSantis until more than an hour into the event, and only after prodding from a voter. “I think he ought to relax and take it easy and think about the future,” Mr. Trump urged.In refusing to say if he would sign a federal ban, Mr. Trump tried to cast Democrats as radical and pledged that he supported exemptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. “What I’ll do is negotiate so people are happy,” he said.“I just want to give you one more chance,” Ms. Collins pressed.He dodged one final time. “Make a deal that’s going to be good,” he said.He deepened his legal jeopardy with comments on investigationsThe most heated exchange that Mr. Trump had with Ms. Collins was over the special counsel investigation into his possession of hundreds of presidential records, including more than 300 individual classified documents, at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, after he left office.And it was the area in which he walked himself into the biggest problems.“I was there and I took what I took and it gets declassified,” said Mr. Trump, who has maintained, despite contradictions from his own former officials, that he had a standing order automatically declassifying documents that left the Oval Office and went to the president’s residence.“I had every right to do it, I didn’t make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside the White House, people were taking pictures of it,” Mr. Trump said, intimating that people were somehow aware that presidential material and classified documents were in them (they were not).In what will be of great interest to the special counsel, Jack Smith, Mr. Trump would not definitively rule out whether he showed classified material to people, something investigators have queried witnesses about, in particular in connection with a map with sensitive intelligence.“Not really,” he hedged, adding, “I would have the right to.” At another point he declared, “I have the right to do whatever I want with them.”He also defended himself for a call he had with Georgia’s secretary of state in which he said he was trying to “find” enough votes to win. “I didn’t ask him to find anything,” Mr. Trump said.There are few issues that worry the Trump team and the former president as much as the documents investigation, and Mr. Trump wore that on his face and in his words on the stage in New Hampshire. 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      CNN’s Donald Trump Forum Was a Preview of Political Coverage to Come

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      Criticized for handing Donald Trump a live prime-time platform, CNN faced a divisive response to an occasionally bewildering broadcast.David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent company, recently defended the network’s decision to host a live town hall with former President Donald J. Trump, calling the event “important for America.”So it proved to be, but perhaps not for the reasons Mr. Zaslav intended.In a bracing and at times bewildering broadcast on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump — appearing on CNN for the first time since 2016 — unleashed a fusillade of falsehoods, sometimes too quickly for his interlocutor, the anchor Kaitlan Collins, to intervene.Again and again, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged. He called E. Jean Carroll a “wack job” and attacked her in misogynist terms. He defended the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.Ms. Collins, composed in the face of Mr. Trump’s turbulence, interrupted, interceded, corrected and called out the former president on his lies. He often responded by talking right over her. When Mr. Trump finally lost patience and derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person,” some in the live audience applauded.This was a preview of what American journalism can expect from a 2024 campaign featuring Mr. Trump, who despite his ubiquity in political life has rarely appeared on mainstream TV outside of Fox News since leaving office.If the 2016 campaign showed that many Americans could not agree on common facts, the Babel-like nature of Wednesday’s New Hampshire town hall suggested that voters now occupy wholly different universes. Mr. Trump repeated a web of conspiracies about a stolen election and the “beautiful day” of the Capitol riot, language that was likely to befuddle half the viewing audience and resonate as gospel with the rest.“The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” Ms. Collins said at one point. “You cannot keep saying that all night long.” (He kept saying it.)Ms. Collins, a rising star at CNN who is being considered for a prominent 9 p.m. slot at the network, was an able choice as moderator. She has covered Mr. Trump for years, knows his idiosyncrasies, and was not intimidated when Mr. Trump tried to bully her.Even Mr. Trump looked stumped when Ms. Collins asked, succinctly, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” (He would not give a straight answer.) She relentlessly pressed him on whether he would sign a federal ban on abortion, pointing out, “You did not say yes or no.” (Again, Mr. Trump would not say.)Still, Ms. Collins could do only so much as the sole journalist on the stage. It quickly became apparent that the crowd of Republican and Republican-leaning independents was deeply skeptical of her efforts to rein in Mr. Trump. The town hall format, where many cheers could be heard as the former president taunted Ms. Collins, made it all the more difficult for her to perform her assignment. (CNN said it assembled the audience in consultation with community groups, faith-based organizations, local Republicans and the Saint Anselm College student government.)When the broadcast ended — after Mr. Trump briefly shook Ms. Collins’s hand and uttered, “Good job” — the cameras cut to a panel of unusually subdued CNN analysts.“We don’t have enough time to fact check every lie he told,” said the anchor Jake Tapper. Some CNN critics had made the same point before Wednesday’s broadcast, and again after it: that it was reckless to allow Mr. Trump to speak live to millions of people in prime-time.Mr. Trump’s inclination to spread falsehoods is well-established. Even Fox News, which has provided the former president friendly forums with conservative stars like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, has not taken Mr. Trump live for many months.He is also the de facto leader of the Republican Party, meaning his remarks are inherently newsworthy to voters on the cusp of a new presidential campaign. CNN said in a statement late Wednesday that its town hall reflected the network’s “role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”Producers and journalists at the other major television networks watched CNN on Wednesday with curiosity, skepticism, and maybe a bit of trepidation.If Mr. Trump remains the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, he will be appearing on their airwaves soon enough. More

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      Trump Camp Sees CNN Town Hall as Calculated Risk

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      Follow for live updates on the Trump CNN town hall meeting.No questions will be off-limits on Wednesday night at the CNN town hall with Donald J. Trump. He can put 15 people of his choice in the audience but none are allowed to ask questions. And his team has not had a hand in guiding how the event will go, according to two people briefed on the discussions.All of this adds up to no small amount of risk for the former president during the prime-time event, his advisers say — a risk they see as worth taking.They expect tough questions from the CNN anchor and moderator, Kaitlan Collins — and have been anticipating questions about abortion, investigations into Mr. Trump and a civil jury’s finding him liable for defamation and sexual abuse in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan, a verdict handed down a day before the town hall.But they also know he will mostly be facing questions from an audience of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in New Hampshire, the state hosting the first primary of the 2024 Republican presidential contest. It was the first state Mr. Trump won in 2016 and a place where he still enjoys popularity among Republicans.Mr. Trump’s advisers say he needs to seek a broader audience as he campaigns for the Republican nomination.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince the end of his presidency, Mr. Trump has largely been relegated to appearing on right-wing networks and podcasts. He has taken reporters aboard his plane now that he’s a candidate, but his team recognizes that he needs to start venturing beyond the fringe to gain access to a broader audience, particularly as a contrast to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who avoids the mainstream media. And CNN was willing to provide him that opportunity, several advisers said. The town hall will be Mr. Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 campaign.“You can’t just stay on certain channels all the time,” said a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to speak publicly about the town hall planning. “You’ve got to start venturing out. And that’s a clear contrast to what other candidates may or may not do.”The town hall has been months in the making.Earlier this year, Mr. Trump’s team had wanted to participate in a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, a popular pro-Trump anchor. But Mr. Hannity ultimately did an interview with Mr. Trump instead, and the town hall never materialized. Through a Fox News press officer, Mr. Hannity denied there was any obstacle to a Fox town hall, insisting Mr. Trump “preferred to do an interview on this occasion and said he would do a town hall as his campaign progressed.”Several weeks after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in November, CNN was in touch with the former president’s team about a possible interview, as the network has held with other presidential candidates, said two people familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to describe the talks. As the conversations about a Fox News town hall fizzled, the Trump team began negotiating with CNN in earnest.“There is no change to our format because of the unique nature of Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “CNN’s role of bringing a candidate into direct touch with voters in this town hall format has been and continues to be a staple of our presidential campaign coverage.”Mr. Trump is not prone to practice sessions. His debate preparations during his two previous presidential campaigns often devolved into him telling old war stories or yelling at aides. For this occasion, Mr. Trump held an informal session with a handful of aides, including his speechwriter, Vince Haley, on Monday in his office at Mar-a-Lago, according to multiple people briefed on the gathering. No one was assigned to play Ms. Collins. Aides have instead discussed questions that might arise.The Trump team has spent considerable time discussing the politics of abortion. Mr. Trump is more responsible than anyone — with the possible exception of the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell — for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.Yet Mr. Trump himself has at times been privately ambivalent about the consequences of the decision, and has blamed abortion politics for Republicans’ dismal performance in the 2022 midterm elections. He discussed the subject as if he were a pundit or bystander rather than the architect of Roe v. Wade’s demise. And he has troubled some prominent anti-abortion activists in the way he has handled questions about abortion policy since the midterms. Mr. Trump has refused to say he would support a national abortion ban, instead saying abortion policy should be left to the states.On Monday, Mr. Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with leaders of the anti-abortion movement who were worried about his recent comments, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. In the meeting, Mr. Trump said his position on abortion was the same as it was when he first ran for president and the same as what he endorsed in office, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. Back then, Mr. Trump supported a national ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. As a result of Mr. Trump’s comments in the meeting, Ms. Dannenfelser released a statement praising him.But in the CNN town hall, Mr. Trump might not stipulate a number of weeks at which abortion should be illegal, according to two people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking. Instead, he is expected to take credit for keeping his anti-abortion promises in office and mention that he supports “the three exceptions”: when necessary to save the life of the mother or when the cases involve rape or incest. He may then turn to attacking Democrats by describing horrific images of late-term abortions, similar to what he did in a 2016 debate with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. More

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      The Panic Over Joe Biden’s Age Is Manufactured

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      The relationship between political campaigns, the news media and the public isn’t exactly an interplay between independent actors. It’s a web of influence.This dynamic is particularly relevant when it comes to the avalanche of headlines and polls about President Biden’s age.The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 63 percent of those surveyed thought Biden didn’t have the mental sharpness to serve effectively; 43 percent said the same of Donald Trump, even though their ages are only a few years apart.Let me say up front that a candidate’s age and competency are always fair game in politics. It’s not ageist to acknowledge the scientific reality that our bodies and minds decline in capacity as we age. It’s not ageist for voters to factor that into their electoral decisions. And aging is individual: Some people appear vibrant at 80 and others worn at 50.But there are also other truths that must be considered. Headlines and polls don’t just measure and reflect public sentiment, they also influence it. The persistence of a theme elevates and validates that theme.As Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, told me: “As with anything in journalism, more broadly, as there’s a great deal of a spotlight on a topic, it raises the salience of that topic for the public, and people are more likely to consider things that are in the news as important.”I also think that we as citizens and consumers of media like to think that we come to our opinions and beliefs completely on our own, and we resist the notion that those opinions have been influenced or manipulated by outside forces. But there is a growing body of research that demonstrates the opposite. We are, unquestionably, influenced by the media.This brings me to the coverage of Biden’s age. It’s true that if he’s re-elected, Biden would be the oldest president we’ve ever had. But he was already the oldest president the first time he was elected. What changed?I’d argue that the biggest change wasn’t the simple passage of time, but the decision of some Republican leaders to focus like a laser on Biden’s age as the factor weighing against him. In an April interview, the former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, said it was unlikely Biden would “make it” through a second term. In this year’s Republican response to the State of the Union address, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas noted that she’s half Biden’s age.Some observers contend that voting for Biden is essentially voting for Vice President Kamala Harris to be president, because Biden may not last another term. For Republicans, that notion offers the added benefit of allowing them to campaign against the trifecta of their disdain — a liberal who’s a minority and a woman.Which brings us back to the web of influence: Campaigns elevate an issue, pollsters and journalists ask whether the issue is having an effect on a race, stories are written about that effect and as a result of the coverage, the effect is often intensified. That is the chain of custody for a political attack, but far too often that connection and context isn’t made clear. It’s often presented as if these types of concerns just spring forth in voters’ minds and aren’t influenced by campaigns and news coverage.This happens all the time in politics.Before the 2018 midterm elections, Trump decided once again to whip up Americans’ xenophobia by harping on a caravan of migrants, an “invasion” he called it, heading for our southern border.Less than a month before those midterms, The Times reported, “For the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have operated largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to push alarmist, conspiratorial warnings about the migrant caravan more than 2,000 miles from the border.” The Times concluded that they had largely succeeded in animating Republican voters “around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country’s security, stability and identity.”This caravan drew headlines and consumed airtime. And there was at least one poll taken about the threats people thought the caravans posed. According to Politico, Trump “seized” on the caravan issue after his team reviewed polling from congressional districts that were competitive in the 2016 election and found that border issues resonated with voters in those districts.But when the midterms were over, Trump backburnered the caravan issue and so did the media, as Quartz reported. And as the publication pointed out, “Attention from Trump and other Republicans helped drive the media coverage of the caravan, and cable news and newspapers either repeated the calls of alarm, or sought to ease concerns.”If the caravans had been entirely of organic interest to the public, more robust coverage probably would have continued. Instead, in that case, we saw how a political party weaponized a topic and the media helped deploy the weapon.This doesn’t mean that immigration and border security aren’t independently newsworthy, but rather that the media doesn’t simply cover campaigns; editorial decisions can be influenced by those campaigns and coverage can influence voters as much as it informs them.This is playing out again. The idea that voters are worried about Biden’s age and capacity has been repeated so often that it no longer requires any proof beyond polling that reflects what respondents have consumed: reports that they’re worried about Biden’s age and capacity.There’s a real chicken-egg conundrum here.And as Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, who generally believes media should “focus more and not less on the health and mental fitness of elected officials,” told me via email, it’s unclear how much the age issue will affect votes for Biden, anyway. As Silver put it: “In the abstract, voters raise high levels of concern but — they also did so in 2020 and he won both the primary and the general. And his approval ratings, while not great, are roughly in line with what you might expect given high polarization and high inflation.”Breathless headlines have created a sense that worry about the president’s age is common knowledge and common sense, when in fact it is, at least in part, fueled by political manipulation and media complicity.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More