CNN’s Town Hall featuring former President Trump attracted 3.1 million viewers on Wednesday, but network executives faced a tsunami of criticism for giving the Republican nominee a platform to spread lies.

The audience counted by Nielsen

in provisional figures

was the largest for CNN since the network

coverage of the July 6, 2021, 2021 Capitol riot assassination hearings July 6 hearings

.

While Trump’s looks did

a strong number for CNN, it was the size of a typical audience for Tucker Carlson on Fox News before he was fired last month.

CNN anchor Kaitl

a

n Collins grilled Trump for 70 minutes in front of an audience of New Hampshire Republican voters at St. Anselm College in

Manchester Goffstown

. It was the rare appearance of

Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential race – the 2024 Republican nominee for president

on a media outlet that is not kind to him.

But

The crowd gave

the event is a Trump rally

atmosphere

of a Trump rally

like it

they suffered

applauded the candidate’s answers, even as he belittled E. Jean Carroll, the woman who was

recently

awarded $5 million after a jury found Trump liable for

being sexually abused being sexually abused

back in 1994.

Trump also repeated his false claims that his 2020 election loss was “manipulated” and so

former then-

Vice President Mike Pence could have saved him

of defeat

by not confirming the election.

although

Collins fought valiantly to correct Trump,

search

attempts

to perform fact checks in real time

often

proven

trivial.

and critics believe critics said

CNN should have known better than to give

Trump

a forum where it

would be what

impossible to filter out disinformation.

“Live Lying Works,” Mark Lukasiewicz,

said

dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication

T

Hofstra University. “Life Facts

–

do not check. Trump is arguably not worth the risk CNN chose to take.”

The event was not well received within the network,

also not

.

“I was just embarrassed,” said a producer who spoke on condition of anonymity

criticize an employer.

“Everyone knows Trump’s lies. Everyone knows what he’s going to say. His propaganda is what his followers want.”

CNN’s own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, said the event evoked the 2016 campaign.

No

media channels g

a

ve Trump enough airtime while rewarding them with large audiences. In the years

that followed ever since

,

former

CNN

is then-

head, Jeff Zucker,

has

has repeatedly expressed regret for making Trump a ratings attraction.

“It felt like 2016 again,” Darcy wrote in his newsletter

wednesday night

. It was Trump’s unhinged social media feed brought to life onstage. And Collins was put in an awkward position as town hall was conducted before a Republican audience who applauded Trump, lending a sense of inadvertent approval to his embarrassing shenanigans. “

The confrontation what

So

highly anticipated and heavily researched, as it was

are

Trump’s first appearance on CNN since 2016. Trump

hadwas

has long been at war with the network under Zucker, regularly attacking the organization as “fake news” in response to unfavorable coverage.

Current CNN chairman Chris Licht has sought to change the network’s reputation from being an anti-Trump voice and trying to give Republicans more airtime

to vote

.

Licht told his staff he was proud of Collins and the event. He said the public was “very well served by what we did last night” as it let people know what was at stake in the 2024

,

election.

So said a CNN representative

personal

The audience was “curated by the network through community groups, student politics and government, faith groups, agricultural and educational organizations, as well as Republican groups. The school and campaign also invited guests.”