@acyn on Twitter).“About last night: the 70 minutes I spent on stage in New Hampshire with former President Donald Trump was a major inflection point in the Republican party’s search for its nominee, and potentially the starting line for America’s next presidential race,” Collins said.“It’s important to remember that he is, right now, the GOP front-runner, that he running, as noted, while being criminally indicted, found civilly liable and under investigation for everything from his handling of classified documents to his business empire.”Collins’ comments come as CNN remains at the center of a heavy backlash over the Trump town hall.
That backlash is complex, but the unifying point is that it was an irresponsible mistake at every level. Critics called out the friendly audience made almost entirely of Trump supporters, the fact that Collins frequently allowed Trump to tell numerous lies with very little resistance, and of course that Trump not only insulted Collins to her face, he defamed E.
Jean Carroll, the woman a jury found him liable of sexually assaulting and defaming just 24 hours earlier.Collin’s remarks mirror part of what Anderson Cooper said an hour earlier in his own CNN show.
Cooper gave a full-throated defense of the debacle that began by acknowledging that everything critics said about the event was true, before then lecturing critics that their opposition to the event was effectively closed-mindedness and epistemic closure. “You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again,” he said.