How Chris Licht Got Played By Trump
CNN learned absolutely nothing from the 2016 debacle of free advertising for Trump.
Blame not Kaitlan Collins. She did her best. Last night’s CNN shitshow was not her fault, though she played a part. Few have come so far so fast in the world of broadcast journalism. Not that I am a fan of her beginnings at The Daily Caller, per se, but she acquitted herself well — or at least as well as a single human can be against a sociopathic liar — in service to the truth. But while the Truth has boundaries, Shamelessness is limitless. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the Truth is putting on its shoes, as the old adage goes.
Kaitland’s corporation — CNN — failed her profoundly. And, as a result of taking on this rather thankless task of a Town Hall with the Town Liar, she is vilified in TrumpWorld and, worse, by amateur media critics that think she should have done a better job at corralling the limitlessness of the former President’s lies. Instead of having her back, CNN put her in an almost impossible situation.
In order for Kaitlin Collins to have been successful she would have had to moderate the Town Hall, push back against Trump’s excesses, contain his grievances, brush off his rage, fact-check him in real time, keep things lively and — most important to a Town Hall — involve the audience. An audience, I cannot fail to note, that was ridiculously, obnoxiously pro-Trump.
The audience was a third presence in that Town Hall, and it was not in any way a neutral force. In defense of that position I will bring up the fact that when Trump lowered his voice and slowed down his grievance freight train to say, “You are a nasty person” to the broadcaster, directly, the audience howled in approval.
Kaitlan Collins was asking hard questions, to be sure, and pushing back against Trump’s talking points, but that is what they both elected to participate in when agreeing to the Town Hall in the first place. Trump turning it personal, while not surprising to his choleric, flatulent character, it was breathtakingly vicious on live TV. And it speaks to Kaitlin Collins’s professionalism and sangfroid that she brushed it off and continued her line of questioning. A neutral response to such an outburst by an ex-President would have been naught else but shock. That’s honestly what I felt when I heard it last night in real time.
Which brings us to Chris Licht, the man in media everyone — from Trumpists to Progressives — love to hate. And with good reason. Licht handpicked Collins for the role which, at the outset, faced serious and heavy criticism. Why, many asked, would CNN — the House that Ted Built — host a twice impeached ex-President on the cusp of his civil trial loss on the grounds of sexual abuse? It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that Licht was Executive Producer to the Late Show with Steven Colbert (see above), setting the witty, highly partisan tone of one of the hallmarks of the #Resistance to Trump’s anti-democratic reign in power. By contrast, the Town Hall was supposed to be the beginning of the big centrist pivot by CNN towards an amorphous Lichtian “Centrism,” but instead it has become a giant, collective social media burning of Licht in effigy. Pure hot garbage mess.
This morning, in unadulterated corporate speak, Licht praised Collins to high heavens. Offering up a seperate reality to the previous night’s events. According to Brian Stelter, Licht congratulated Collins on her “‘masterful performance last night.’ He says ‘I couldn't be more proud of her’ and the whole team in NH.”
Really?
I understand it was a 9am editorial call and Chris Licht’s job is partly to boost the team. It was a hard night; he had some work to do, clearly. But wouldn’t it have been a better leadership move to acknowledge what everyone that watched the Town Hall already knows? Instead of offering up a corporate-sanitized false reality, wouldn’t it be more assuring to the troops to hear from their fearless leader “We messed up”? It happens sometimes. Because, quite frankly, what happened last night was a campaign commercial for Trump. Trump took control of the whole damn show. It was not a news event. It was just plain embarrassing. CNN learned absolutely nothing from the 2016 debacle of free advertising for Trump.
What — and who — is behind Chris Licht’s centrist pivot? Because the former EP of Colbert’s Show seems an eccentric fit for “both-sidesism.”
Behind Chris Licht we have his boss, David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery. The very, very well compensated Zaslav was a big booster of the Town Hall. “He’s the front-runner — he has to be on our network,” Zaslav argued. “We’re happy he’s coming on there.” Zaslav, it should be noted, has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, but largely to Democrats, so there’s that. It is his mentor, John Malone, however, whose influence holds large sway over CNN and its pivot. He deserves a bit of an investigation.
Behind Zaslav we have the pay TV legend John Malone, Zaslav’s mentor. Let’s take a little peek under the hood, shall we? The Connecticut-born billionaire has been in the media business for decades and is deeply Republican. From Peter Kafka in Vox, on Malone’s beginnings:
In its earliest years, cable was sold as a way to deliver broadcast channels in areas where normal TV antennas wouldn’t work, like the Rocky Mountains. Malone built up his Denver-based company Tele-Communications Inc. into a cable Goliath by rolling up a series of small mom-and-pop operators using debt financing. Along the way, he used his power as a distributor to extract ownership stakes in cable TV programmers like Fox News and QVC. He cashed out by selling to AT&T for $48 billion in 1999.
Since then, Malone has bought and sold and swapped companies and stakes in companies over and over, always with an eye on keeping his taxes as low as possible. He now owns a portfolio that includes meaningful ownership in everything from satellite music service SiriusXM to baseball’s Atlanta Braves to Live Nation, the ticketing and concert giant. And until last year, he was the major force behind Discovery, the cable programmer best known for reality TV shows like Deadliest Catch. He plucked NBC executive David Zaslav to run Discovery in 2006.
Malone has donated massive amounts of money to multiple Republican causes — from the NRCC to Marco Rubio to Chuck Grassley — and, curiously $5 to the Beto campaign in 2022(?!). Unlike Zaslav, his loyalties are clearly on the right side of the aisle. “Malone describes himself as a ‘libertarian’ although he travels in rightwing Republican circles,” Robert Reich reminds us. “In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.”
But back to Chris Licht. By way of this executive segue into the mechanics of CNN’s pivot we kind of lost track of the core question: Why did Trump agree to this strange Town Hall — on CNN, a channel that had been good to him, to be sure, with rallies but not necessarily “friendly.” Not as friendly as Fox, which is a better organic fit. Trump teased it on Truth Social:
Intriguing. “A deal he couldn’t refuse”? And what, pray tell, would that be? One can only speculate, but it could be that the audience that CNN picked was very, very favorable to Trump. That, so much, was evident. It would be hugely embarrassing for Licht, though, if reports came out as to how favorable CNN made the audience’s composition to Trump in return for his participation. As I noted yesterday, Trump’s re-election team is serious business. They came to win. As the Town Hall performance showed, they are not a fly by night operation, like Trump’s 2016 campaign.
And what of CNN’s dealing with Trump’s new team? Could that be the beginning of “a New and Vibrant CNN”? Close cooperation between CNN and the Trump campaign? I’m sure Malone, from a distance, would mind. It is Chris Licht, however, that is going to be taking the incoming fire today and many more days going forward. And despite the peppy early morning message to the troops, CNN looks bad. CNN — and Licht especially — looks like they got on the bad end of a Trump deal. They got played.
"America was served very well by what we did last night," Chris Licht said during the Editorial call. “Many CNN employees strongly disagree,” answered Stelter.
I’m sure many non-CNN employees would co-sign on that.
Trump and the Town Hall (Reliable Sources)
Not Biden vs. Trump Again! The Disgruntled Voters Who Could Decide the 2024 Election (Sabatos Crystal Ball)
How the Fox Sausage Gets Made. (Elizabeth Spiers)
What It's Like Being a Creative When You're Not Middle Class or White (VICE)
The Head of CNN Thinks It's Journalism's Job to "Make News." That's a Problem. (Parker Molloy)