GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has agreed to do a town hall event on CNN. It will be on Wednesday, May 10 at 9:00 p.m. The moderator is Kaitlan Collins. It will be must-see tv.

There will be a live audience consisting of New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who say they intend to vote in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. Collins, the co-host of “CNN This Morning”, is a former White House correspondent who covered the Trump White House. She will ask questions of Trump and take questions from the audience. The venue is Saint Anselm College.

All eyes will be on Kaitlan Collins. Fun fact: She was the White House correspondent for The Daily Caller before joining CNN. It is rumored that she is up for consideration for her own show and this town hall exposure will certainly be a notable addition to her resume.

Rest assured that the fact-checkers in the media who have been asleep up until now will suddenly awaken from their slumber and show new-found diligence for their jobs. Team Trump has decided that the way forward during this campaign is to treat the media as it did in 2015. Trump is expected to go on all sorts of networks, not just friendly networks like Fox and Newsmax. Tom Jones writes in the liberal The Poynter Report that Trump is going outside his comfort zone in the 2024 campaign.

A Trump adviser told CNN’s Oliver Darcy, “Going outside the traditional Republican ‘comfort zone’ was a key to President Trump’s success in 2016. Some other candidates are too afraid to take this step in their quest to defeat Joe Biden, and are afraid to do anything other than Fox News.”

That sounds like a shot (or a dare) at other potential Republican candidates. (Uh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?) Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports that this is all a part of a new aggressive media strategy from Trump. Isenstadt writes that Trump has been in talks with other networks, including NBC. In addition, going on CNN could be a poke at Fox News.

Isenstadt says it was CNN that reached out to Trump “several months ago.” Again, I have no problem with that. CNN is a news outlet. Trump is newsworthy.

Remember in 2015 when Trump ran for the first time? He was everywhere. All media outlets gave him hours and millions of dollars in earned media coverage. Joe and Mika were big fans of The Donald and frequent guests at Mar a Lago. Then, when he got the Republican nomination, all those liberal media types turned against him and jumped in to support Hillary. It was all very predictable, of course, because American media can’t be seen as supporting a Republican candidate for president. Perhaps Trump will use the 2015 playbook and appear on all networks.

It’s a business decision for CNN. Trump brings in big bucks for them. He will draw a big audience. Ratings should be good. Tom Jones asks, “Should they host someone who is known to spread dangerous misinformation and disinformation?” This made me chuckle. Really? CNN made a lot of money off of their coverage of the Trump presidency which included spreading the “dangerous misinformation and disinformation” of Russia, Russia, Russia for three years. Give me a break. There was no story too ridiculous for CNN (and MSNBC) to cover if it was unflattering to Trump.

Jones does say that it is unfair to criticize politicians who won’t appear on all networks and then criticize them when they do. That’s fair. It will be interesting to see how aggressive Collins gets in her questions to Trump. She’s trying to prove she is ready for the next rung on her career ladder – a show of her own. Trump will be trying to win over some independent voters who may tune into the town hall. We’ll see how it goes.