Tom Minear: Reality check for triggered Donald Trump haters

Donald Trump could well become president again, so instead of complaining about his TV town hall, Tom Minear warns his critics must stop burying their heads in the sand.

A complete disaster. Total madness. Extremely irresponsible. A disservice to democracy.

These were not reviews of Donald Trump’s performance in a town hall on CNN last week. They were, in fact, the angry attacks on CNN for putting the former president on air in the first place.

Since Trump left the White House in disgrace, the left-leaning network and its rivals have mostly ignored him. But with 18 months until the next election, and Trump the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee, CNN decided it was worth hearing what he had to say.

For anyone who has been paying attention to the de facto Republican leader, none of it was surprising. He lied about election fraud, bragged about sexually assaulting women, hedged on the importance of defending Ukraine, and praised the January 6 rioters.

Donald Trump is grilled by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Picture: Supplied

For CNN’s viewers, however, this apparently should have come with a trigger warning.

“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies,” the network’s own media reporter grumbled.

Democrats in Congress and the media blasted anchor Kaitlan Collins’s efforts to fact-check Trump in real time. And they were horrified by the crowd of Republicans – the voters who will decide if Trump is their 2024 nominee – who cheered and laughed at every falsehood and insult.

This is the reality of polarisation here in the US. People interested in politics (and a large swathe of the country is not) mostly exist in their own ideological bubbles. They are not challenged by different views; they may not even know anyone who votes differently to them.

Donald Trump’s supporters welcome him to New Hampshire ahead of his CNN town hall. Picture: Joseph Prezioso (AFP)

The criticism of CNN seemed to imply the network had two alternatives. One would have been to call out all of Trump’s lies, maybe cut his microphone, or even only air an edited package – a strategy that would play into his hands by bolstering his claim to be an outsider fighting the political elites. The other alternative would have been to ignore him completely.

But journalists must confront the world as it is, and if polarisation is ever going to be subdued, so too must their audience.

Trump is not going anywhere, and neither are his tens of millions of supporters. CNN’s critics should realise the network did them a favour by reminding the rest of the country who he is.

It is depressing and alarming to consider what another Trump campaign will look like, let alone another Trump presidency. But his opponents cannot bury their heads in the sand and ignore reality. After all, that’s what happened in 2016, and look how that turned out.

Originally published as Tom Minear: Reality check for triggered Donald Trump haters