Office Hours: What do you think of CNN giving Trump a full hour of prime-time TV tonight?

I think it’s dangerous and disgraceful

Friends,

Shame on CNN for giving Donald Trump a one-hour live prime-time town hall special tonight.

This is the man who summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the U.S. Capitol, where they rioted.

The man who lost reelection but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice president to refuse to certify Electoral College votes, sought access to voting machine data and software, and got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes although his own Department of Justice found no fraud in the election.

The man who is currently on trial for rape. The man who has been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Why honor him with a full hour of prime time?

Defending CNN’s decision, David Zaslav, who runs CNN’s parent company, said “the U.S. is a divided government. We need to hear both voices …. Republicans are on the air at CNN. Democrats are on the air. All voices should be heard on CNN.”

All voices? Including a twice-impeached, insurrectionist, serial sexual abuser who everyone knows will do nothing but spew disinformation and conspiracy theories?

Some might say that providing the American people with a full hour to hear and see Trump respond to questions from a town hall audience will remind viewers of his pathological mythomania, turning off even more voters.

But America doesn’t need reminding. The nation has had years of Trump’s hateful and dangerous lies — about “Mexican rapists and murderers,” “dangerous” Muslim immigrants, a “perfectly fine” phone call seeking help from Ukraine in the 2020 election, “fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville white supremacist violence, COVID being “like the flu,” how governors could “safely” reopen their economies despite high rates of infection and the absence of mask mandates, the 2020 election being “stolen,” and much else.

CNN’s moderator tonight won’t have any realistic chance to fact check him. It’s going to be a full hour of unfiltered hate and disinformation.

Handing Donald Trump a free hour of live prime-time TV to spew lies is not journalism. It’s not news. It’s entertainment designed to boost CNN’s sagging ratings so Zaslav and other executives can make more money.

It’s the height of irresponsibility, analogous to what Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has done for years. It debases America and threatens our democracy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to boost CNN’s ratings by watching this shameful farce.

That’s my view. What do you think?