The truth about the many untruths aired in prime time.
When Johnnie Cochran called me in October of 1995 to tell me the live interview with O.J. Simpson scheduled for that night had been canceled, I did a happy dance in my hotel room. Tom Brokaw and I were set to interrogate Simpson about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, his recent acquittal, and the many unanswered questions that were still looming in the cool L.A. smog. We had poured over articles and interviews on our way to the West Coast, but a nagging feeling had followed me the entire trip: This was a no-win situation. We couldn’t relitigate the trial like aggressive prosecutors, and we couldn’t let O.J., well, get away with murder.
As Wednesday night approached, I couldn’t help but think about Kaitlan Collins preparing for the Trump town hall. Compared to Donald Trump, O.J. Simpson was a pushover: When Kaitlan tried to challenge him, he just kept talking — when he wasn’t accusing her of having an agenda or calling her “nasty,” his signature adjective for women who challenge him. When he spoke mistruth after mistruth, she had to judge in real time when to jump in. It was an almost impossible task. As my husband said, it was like trying to handle a flopping toddler in the middle of a temper tantrum with a measured, rational response — which rarely works.
Had Collins corrected or challenged all of his lies, there would be no time for audience questions, which is what a town hall is supposed to be. This wasn’t just a train wreck. This was a full-out derailment with a toxic waste spillage rivaling the one in East Palestine, Ohio. But in this case, the hazardous material was coming from a former President of the United States.
From describing Jan. 6 as a “beautiful day,” to saying he is “inclined to pardon many” of those who were convicted for their behavior that day (1,003 have been charged, 476 have entered guilty pleas, 350 have been sentenced, and 192 are serving time), to calling a Black Capitol police officer who protected members of Congress from an angry mob out for blood “a thug,” to saying he’d never met E. Jean Carroll (there’s photographic proof), Trump’s twisted misrepresentations came fast and furiously.
The most egregious lie, of course, was his repeated claim that the election was “rigged,” despite zero evidence of that. A recent poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents found 63% of respondents clinging to the idea that the election was illegitimate, despite these facts: In more than 60 cases, judges determined the allegations of a stolen election perpetrated by the former president and his allies were without merit. According to Politifact, “Some of the lawsuits had errors in the filings, others lacked standing. Mainly, the allegations lacked proof.”
And as Judy Woodruff reported on PBS NewsHour on Dec. 17, 2021: “More than a year after President Biden won the presidential election, former President Trump and his allies insist, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud led to a stolen election. A new, exhaustive piece of reporting from the Associated Press shows that is simply not true. AP reporters went looking for cases of voter fraud in six states that Trump has challenged, and they found fewer than 475 potential instances out of more than 25 million votes cast, a number that would not have come close to changing the outcome.”
Early in the 70-minute town hall, Trump was spewing inaccurate and deeply misleading information on abortion. I wanted to open the TV and teleport myself to New Hampshire, but alas, there’s no technology for that — yet.
The former president claimed that before Roe v. Wade was overturned, “they could kill the baby in the ninth month or after the baby was born.” That is patently untrue. Once again, take it away, Politifact:
Before the landmark abortion case was overturned in 2022, ninth-month abortions were exceedingly rare and not done legally except in the case of serious health risks to the mother. Killing a baby after it is born has always been homicide and against the law.
Historically, less than 1% of abortions have been performed at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy. During the ninth month — which is even later than that, starting around 33 weeks — abortions are even rarer; they are often difficult to obtain because the procedure is costly, time-sensitive and only performed by a small subset of abortion providers.
Abortions that late in pregnancy are not allowed on a whim. Roe allowed states to restrict abortions — including banning them altogether — after the point of fetal viability (approximately 24 weeks) with one key exception: when the mother’s life or health was at stake.
Meanwhile, multiple federal laws protect against killing a child after birth as well as many state laws. State laws “are the primary source of protection against active or negligent killing of infants born during the process of abortion,” Teresa S. Collett, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas and director of the university’s Prolife Center, told PolitiFact in 2019.
“Actively killing an infant born alive is a crime,” said Lois Shepherd, a University of Virginia professor of law and biomedical ethics, in 2019. “Under the law, living infants are just like other living people. They are children. Children are people.”
One of the most disturbing parts of the live, televised event was the audience. It was made up of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents, snickering at Trump’s sneering and cheering his misstatements and insults.
Meanwhile, there’s no word to describe the format, other than awful. As the presumptive GOP nominee (for now), voters need to know where Donald Trump stands on the issues. But CNN should have picked a venue and format that would have allowed Trump to be vigorously challenged with clear facts, made point by point, without a de facto pep rally and softball questions from his supporters. Without that, his completely false representations were allowed to sit there, uncorrected. One of the most important jobs of a journalist is to hold public figures accountable on behalf of the American people. The setup made that not only difficult, but virtually impossible.
There will be many discussions and debates as media organizations figure out (again) how to cover a candidate that is far outside the norms of our political traditions and core democratic values. I’m just not sure anyone was truly served by a town hall that was more of a spectacle than a platform for a civil conversation — something the former president seems incapable of having.
Perhaps the only purpose it served was to remind voters that there is no Donald Trump 2.0. The break from his poisonous rhetoric was nice while it lasted. To paraphrase Margo Channing in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy year.” I’m already exhausted — and more than a little afraid.
