Did you watch the Trump town hall on CNN last night? If you didn’t, let me tell you what I learned.

I learned that you should support Donald Trump in 2024 because:

1. He is going to end the Russia/Ukraine war within 24 hours of becoming president in January 2025.
2. He is going to reinstate the policy of separating families at the border, as a way to stop families from trying to come.
3. He is going to move us to energy independence by adopting a policy that he calls “Drill, baby, drill”.
4. He is going to attack the legitimacy of the 2024 election unless he decides there was no fraud involved.
5. He is highly supportive of abortion restrictions, and takes full credit for the Supreme Court passing the Dobbs situation.
6. He is going to pardon most (maybe all) of the people convicted of Jan 6 criminal activity
7. He is going to end inflation by approving more oil drilling.

I also learned that

1. He still believes he won the election in 2020.
2. He never even met E. Jean Carroll.
3. The country is falling apart and will continue to fall apart (with everyone laughing at us) unless he is elected in 2024.
4. Those who oppose the Dobbs decision would abort babies any times during the 9 months of pregnancy, and maybe after birth.
5. The strong military that he left the country with has been destroyed in the past two years.
6. He would reinstate Title 42 to keep sick migrants from coming into the country.

There was also a bit of ambiguity. Did you know that Trump finished the Wall, and that he wants to build more of the Wall because he hasn’t finished it. And that not only will he end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, but he will force Europe to provide more military funding for Ukraine to take the burden off of us (Europe, as usual, is taking advantage of us).

What is most clear, I think, is that Trump (and therefore his supporters) do not believe in the American legal system. They don’t trust the courts, which turned down over 60 attempts to find fraud in the election results. They don’t trust the New York State prosecutors, they don’t think that there can be a fair jury in either New York or Washington, and any judge who rules against Trump is corrupt. What could be more dangerous?

One more point:

Kaitlan Collins was a very unusual town hall moderator, and this was an unusual town hall. Most political town halls that I have watched have been designed to have audience members question the candidate, with the moderator acting as a neutral and generally keeping order and deciding when it was time for a new question. Last night, though, the moderator was there, in part, to fact check Trump; this itself was very unusual. And fact check she did, but fact checking meant that she made clear her own positions while she was challenging the “facts” stated by the candidate, and she did so not by waiting until Trump finished a comment (which admittedly could have taken a long time), but by interrupting him or trying to talk over him. And if you agree that this was her role, she did a fine job. But many – especially Trump supporters, of course – will not think this was her role and will not think that she did a good job. And she better watch her step and her social media, because she is now going to be a likely target of right wing hate.

And as for CNN. Was this a smart or proper thing for them to do? Most likely, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2024, whether or not he kills someone on Fifth Avenue, and therefore cannot be ignored, as some would like CNN and other rational news sources to do. But this is so early in the campaign – and will this mean that CNN will need to provide other Republican candidates with a similar opportunity? DeSantis is not yet a candidate, but what about Asa Hutchinson, for example? And when will they do this?

But there is another question. What was the purpose of this town hall? Was it to give New Hampshire voters, or voters in other states, the opportunities to size up Trump redux? Or was it a “trick”, an event designed to allow CNN correspondents to slam and criticize him? If the latter (and that is what it seems like), even more questions arise? Will it help the reputation of CNN? Will it hurt the odds that Trump will become the nominee, or will it backfire? And is this the way the CNN executives planned this out, or was this the CNN journalists getting back at management.

Keep tuned. We may find out.