Trump Bashes Fox News, Trolls CNN Following Town Hall – Rolling Stone

Donald Trump knows he needs media giants like Fox News and CNN to help him win back the White House in 2024. He’s been busy pushing them to bend to his will.

CNN is certainly complying. The network invited him to spend over an hour pushing lies to millions of viewers during a town hall event last Wednesday. Many within the network have criticized the decision to host the former president, with insiders describing it to Rolling Stone as everything from “appalling” to a “fucking disgrace.” Trump is still gloating about it.

“I was amazed to see that they were traumatized by what took place. They were actually traumatized,” the former president told The Messenger in an interview published Monday. “They should have said, ‘We had a tremendous ratings night, one of the best in years, many years,’ and spiked the football.”

Trump has been bragging about the town hall’s ratings since it ended, including Sunday night on Truth Social in a post that also included jabs at moderator Kaitlin Collins, whom Trump went after throughout the town hall, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who bashed the event on Twitter.

“It’s really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall,” the former president wrote. “In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms. Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close. That’s when the trouble from the Radical Left started. Neurotic little AOC with the bad looking boyfriend, went crazy. “He owns CNN, he’s in their head,” they screamed. CNN, take the GREAT RATINGS!”

Nielsen reported that the town hall drew 3.3 million viewers, which is indeed a huge number for the network but fell short of the 3.4 million it drew for a town hall with President Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

Trump thinks Fox News could get a similar ratings boost if they would only stop paying attention to Ron DeSantis and start pushing the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen a little harder.

“Fox News is way down in the Ratings,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday. “After firing Tucker Carlson and refusing to fight against a VERY Corrupt and Rigged 2020 Presidential Election, which just cost them plenty of money, prestige, and RATINGS, they are a far cry from what they used to be. FoxNews has become the DeSanctimonious Network, but it will never work because he doesn’t have the goods. Without my Endorsement, he was a dead man walking. Even with Fox, he’s already pretty close to that again!”

Fox News — which despite the former president’s rantings, is chock-full of pro-Trump propaganda — is paying through the nose for their previous efforts to fight the “VERY Corrupt and Rigged 2020 Presidential Election.” It agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems over a quarter of a billion dollars last month for lying about election fraud. Smartmatic, another company suing the network over its election lies, is reportedly seeking an even larger payment.