The Worst Thing to Come Out of Trump’s Town Hall Didn’t Come From Trump

You already know what happened in CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump last night. You know it because you know Donald Trump. Performative cruelty, preening selfishness, bluster, hatred, insults, lies—it was a grotesque display made even worse by the fact that the grotesquerie was entirely predictable.

Trump is, in the strictest sense, old news. He is a known quantity. He is no longer capable of revealing anything new, about himself or his movement. Because of that, only one piece of relevant news emerged from the town hall. It came not from the event itself, but from the this morning. Licht congratulated the town hall’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, on her effort to coax truth out of Trump’s lies. And he did so in particular terms: “Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news,” Licht said, the media reporter (and former CNN anchor) Brian Stelter. “Made a of news.” And “that is our job.”