This week, scandal-ridden former president Donald Trump — who is already openly refusing to participate in a Republican presidential debate — participated in a town hall at New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, which he effectively treated like less of a political forum and more of an open mic night featuring the one and only Donnie J. Trump.
The whole event was every bit the hot mess we expected it to be and more, with Collins posing multiple questions to the former president, only for him to grandstand, scream, carry on, beat around the bush, and yet repeatedly never even answered the question posed to him with a simple yes or no and eventually devolved into Trump hitting the CNN host with one of his favorite insults when he called her a “nasty person.”
Despite the ex-president’s horrendous behavior and manners throughout the entire event, Collins remained strong and steadfast, ensuring that she touched on all of the most prominent topics concerning the scandal-ridden, newly-indicted ex-president — ranging from the recent sexual assault civil verdict against him in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, to the ongoing election crime investigation in Georgia, to the ongoing Justice Department investigations still raging against him concerning the Mar-a-Lago stolen document scandal, to the January 6th Capitol attack, to Trump’s overall efforts to overthrow a United States presidential election — even as the town hall audience repeatedly cheered Trump and his bullshit antics on at every given opportunity.
In the hours and days since the CNN town hall, the behavior we witnessed out of the New Hampshire audience has been a point of debate, suspicion, and contention among Americans who were, frankly, dumbfounded that the event consisted of an audience full of nothing but MAGA sycophants, based on the way they were behaving and responding to the ex-president’s outlandish rhetoric.
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But as it turns out, that audience may not have been as chock full of Trump lovers as we thought.
According to Republican political consultant Matthew Bartlett, who sat for an interview with Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri this week, there were actually quite a few members of the town hall crowd who were “disgusted” and “bewildered” by the absolute spectacle Trump made of himself and the event, they just weren’t allowed to express that disdain during the town hall, as they had allegedly been instructed not to boo.
“On CNN, it sure looked like Trump won over the crowd during his town hall interview with Kaitlan Collins,” Puck News’ report reads. “But the reality was different in the room—and in the state of New Hampshire.”
“The floor manager came out ahead of time and said, Please do not boo, please be respectful. You were allowed to applaud,” Bartlett told Palmeri. “And I think that set the tone where people were going to try their best to keep this between the navigational beacons, and that if they felt compelled to applaud, they would, but they weren’t going to have an outburst or they weren’t going to boo an answer.”
The GOP political consultant went on to explain that while there were many people in the audience who were genuinely cheering and applauding the former president, “there were also people that sat there quietly disgusted or bewildered.” According to Bartlett’s estimation, about half of the town hall audience was authentic in their praise-filled responses to Trump, while the other half sat silent.
“In a TV setting, you hear the applause, but you don’t see the disgust,” Bartlett explained in the interview. “So Trump did not have the entire room on his side, make no mistake, even if it certainly came across that way on TV.”
Read the full interview with Puck News here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
