Why did CNN host a town hall with former President Trump? For the ratings, baby. The network has been in the ratings doldrums for so long that it decided Trump was the person to put them in the win column. He did. The town hall got a Tucker Carlson level rating with 3.3 million viewers. CNN was the most-watched cable news network of the evening and that hasn’t happened in years.

Axios reports that on an editorial call with CNN employees Thursday morning, CEO Chris Licht defended the event.

“It is our job to get those answers and hold him accountable,’ he said while acknowledging that covering Trump is “messy and tricky.”

“America was served by what we did last night,” he added.

Internally, some of CNN’s staff disagreed. One member of CNN’s newsroom said the event was “a disaster.” Another said it was a “s*** show.”

But it was a success for CNN. CNN’s base audience may have been irritated that Trump was given the platform but the event was a ratings success. That is what matters. CNN is a business. They live or die by ratings. The ability to sell advertising is crucial for the network’s bottom line. If no one is watching, companies will not advertise. It’s as simple as that.

The left truly lost its mind during and after CNN’s town hall with Trump. UltraViolet describes itself as a community of one million people who drive feminist cultural and political change. They were so traumatized by how well Trump handled his appearance on CNN that UltraViolet called for the firing of CNN CEO Chris Licht Thursday.

The organization re-tweeted a tweet from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and included a thread of it outrage over Licht allowing Trump airtime, essentially. UltraViolet said Licht allowed Trump a platform to lie.

Unless something significant changes, Donald Trump will be the '24 Republican presidential candidate.

As evidenced by last night’s embarrassing display, CNN appears unphased about the damage last night.

If the network has any ethics left, they’ll fire Chris Licht immediately.

— UltraViolet is not paying for this (@UltraViolet) May 11, 2023

We're calling on @CNN to fire CEO Chris Licht who knowingly broadcasted lies and conspiracies on national television.

The network flagrantly compromised its journalistic integrity for ratings and viewership. Shame on them and Chris Licht for bringing disinformation on TV. /2

— UltraViolet is not paying for this (@UltraViolet) May 11, 2023

That is what the left does. Anything they don’t want to hear is called a lie. Yet, they remain silent every time Joe Biden opens his mouth and another lie falls out. UltraViolet aligning itself with AOC to limit the free speech rights of a former president and current candidate is all you need to know about its agenda. The liars were CNN and other liberal networks who spun lies and concocted tales of Russian collusion for the years of Trump’s term in office.

Joe Biden has been a failure as a president. He is Jimmy Carter-level bad. There are no big successes for the left to credit Biden with as he runs for re-election so they go back to the 2020 election and dredge up old issues. Kaitlan Collins focused on old stories – January 6, 2021, classified documents, the 2020 election, the Access Hollywood tape, and so on. She asked if Putin is a war criminal. What cable media hosts like Kaitlan Collins don’t understand is that voters in the Midwest and the middle of the country don’t care about any of that stuff now. They want to know about what a candidate is going to do about inflation so that they can more easily pay their bills and buy groceries and gas for their car to get to work and and the kids to school. Voters look forward, not backwards. Trump has to learn to stop talking about the 2020 election. The media has to talk about what voters what to know about.

UltraViolet blasted CNN when it issued a statement after the town hall aired. It demands “accountability” and that means Licht should be fired.

“CNN’s town hall was a disaster. CNN knew Donald Trump would lie about the 2020 election and make reckless and untrue claims about everything from January 6th to abortion. He even mocked E. Jean Carroll the day after a federal court convicted him of defamation and sexual assault against her. CNN not only allowed Trump to do so — they enabled him,” the statement read. “The network must take accountability by firing CEO Chris Licht, who knowingly broadcasted lies and conspiracies on national television.”

It continued, “Licht stacked the deck in Trump’s favor in a desperate attempt to seize ratings. That is unacceptable. Regardless of his relationship with Trump, it’s clear Chris Licht is not up to leading a credible national news network.”

The fact is that Trump is the highest polling candidate running for president right now – in either party. Trump is using his 2015 playbook and garnering earned media coverage. Remember in 2015 he was on every show on the dial. He was on all the late-night shows and the early morning shows, too. He regularly called in to Fox and CNN and the anchors put him on the air. Joe and Mika loved him on Morning Joe, until he received the Republican nomination. Then he was dead to them. No more visits to Mar a Lago for them to hobnob with Trump and his crowd there. Did Trump’s personality suddenly change? Did he become a different person? Of course not. When Trump was a celebrity business man, Hollywood and the coastal elites loved him. When he got into politics as a Republican, that began to change. By the time he got the party’s nomination, it was all over.

So, because of his strong polling lead right now and the fact that it is not at all certain that Joe Biden will win re-election, CNN took a chance and hosted a town hall with the candidate that the network knew would bring them ratings gold, especially with his legal troubles in the news. Collins thought she could out-perform Trump. The executives at CNN were rumored to be using the town hall as a live audition for Collins and a possible primetime show of her own. She was way out of her league. She wouldn’t let Trump talk because she was too busy giving her own opinion. It was obnoxious, to say the least. Trump was calm, articulate, and a happy warrior. The audience loved it.

Joy (less) Behar was unnerved to see that the audience was filled with Trump “cult members”, she said on The View Thursday morning. I’m old enough to remember the Cult of Obama and she was a card-carrying member of that club. Hearing her talk about others as cultists is pretty amusing. Trump did well. Kaitlan Collins did not. That is what the left is most angry about.