OPINION:
All things considered, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins did a fine job moderating Wednesday night’s Republican town hall with former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire.
It could have been so much worse: CNN could have picked the noted self-help enthusiast Jeffrey Toobin to moderate the event.
So, kudos to CNN for at least trying to return to being a serious news organization. Ms. Collins did a splendid job impersonating an annoying Washington journalist obsessed with all the things no actual voters care about.
She was poised for combat and armed to interrupt Mr. Trump with lectures whenever he wandered into forbidden territory.
Ms. Collins sounded like a student who had just come home from college for the first time with her head full of facts and big ideas all ready to pounce on Grandpa and straighten him out about all the things he is not supposed to talk about.
“But Mr. President, I have to stop you there because — because there is no evidence of that,” she kept saying.
This would normally be irritating to the point of unwatchable. But because it was Mr. Trump, it was all highly entertaining.
“Mr. President, that’s not accurate,” she interrupted as Mr. Trump kept talking. “I think it’s important, Mr. President, to actually set the record straight here.”
Mr. Trump just kept on rolling, talking about boxes and boxes of President Biden’s stolen documents that were found in his garage, next to his Corvette and down in Chinatown.
“He had boxes sent to Chinatown. Chinatown! Where they don’t even speak English!”
Repeatedly, Ms. Collins interjected to defend Mr. Biden and explain why Mr. Trump’s handling of documents was so much worse. But Mr. Trump just kept on Trumping.
“Why is it that Biden had nine boxes in Chinatown? And he gets a lot of money from China.”
“There is no evidence of that,” Ms. Collins complained. “No, you cannot — there is no evidence of that.”
It was like she was in a police car with her lights and sirens on trying to pull over a tornado.
At one point, she informed Mr. Trump — and the CNN audience — that of the more than 3 million votes cast by Wisconsin voters in the 2020 election, not a single one was fraudulent.
“Mr. President, there weren’t any fraudulent votes in Wisconsin,” she said flatly.
Ms. Collins was the substitute teacher lecturing the class about stuff nobody cared about. Mr. Trump was the cool jock who got moved to the front of the class for misbehaving in the back but still never stopped cracking jokes and talking about what everybody actually wanted to hear about.
This began roughly the second the town hall started.
“We will get to the voters shortly,” Ms. Collins began her first question.
“Your polls show that you are dominating the Republican race right now, but you are also under active federal investigation for trying to overturn the 2020 election results, your first term ended with a deadly riot at the Capitol and you still have not publicly acknowledged the 2020 election results.”
“Why should Americans put you back in the White House?”
“Because we did fantastically,” he replied to laughter and applause.
Once the floor was opened to questions from the audience, the questions became much more serious, informative and relative to voters’ concerns. They asked about the economy, gas prices, inflation, national debt, abortion, illegal immigration and Mr. Biden’s war in Ukraine.
Somehow, CNN managed to find a Republican voter interested in the same nonsense Ms. Collins kept obsessing over.
He asked if Mr. Trump would “suspend polarizing talk about election fraud” during his campaign.
“Yes,” Mr. Trump replied. “Unless I see election fraud.”
But Ms. Collins kept steering the conversation back to Jan. 6 and all the things her colleagues in the political press obsess over. She seemed particularly interested in the jury verdict earlier this week that found Mr. Trump not liable for raping a woman in a department store over 20 years ago — yet somehow held him liable for sexually abusing her and maligning her after the non-rape.
“She’s a whack job,” Mr. Trump said of his accuser, who once told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a live interview that “most people think of rape as being sexy. They think of fantasies.”
Mr. Cooper had to quickly go to commercial to avoid further embarrassment for the Trump accuser. Which is another reason to be grateful CNN had Ms. Collins moderate the town hall instead of Mr. Cooper. Or Jeffrey Toobin.
• Charles Hurt is opinion editor for the Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.