“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin ripped CNN Monday for hosting a town hall with former President Donald Trump.
The panel reacted to Trump’s town hall with CNN anchor and former Daily Caller reporter Kaitlan Collins, to which Hostin said CNN did the event to get its ratings up.
“I was so disappointed that CNN gave him that platform,” she said. “And I think that was a business decision. I think that CNN has lost so many viewers at this point and they’ve defected to MSNBC and other places, that they want a chunk of that Fox News viewership and they got a chunk of it and then lost it immediately. So now you have CNN, which used to be in my view an extremely credible organization, now giving credibility to a non-serious person and doing it for money…what we saw with the town hall was bad for the country, but good for CNN briefly. Bad gamble.”
Co-host Ana Navarro said a news network should not ignore the Republican primary frontrunner and the former president. She then defended Collins from bipartisan criticism and said Collins should embrace the fact that Trump called her “nasty” during the town hall. (RELATED: Sunny Hostin Claims Anderson Cooper Tried To ‘Gaslight’ America Over Trump Town Hall)
Co-host Sara Haines defended the town hall by saying that the media should cover candidates and political figures and allow the voters to decide. Hostin pushed back and criticized the rule that Trump could be applauded, but not booed, in the audience.
“Did we really see what was really happening in the room? Did we see real journalism or did we see propaganda?” Hostin added.
“I think they do that in general at debates, because I feel that people that are covering them always say ‘we don’t want booing,'” Haines said. “But I do think that the people asking the questions should be Republicans, I don’t think the audience should have been full of all like-minded people, I don’t think that was representative of the state nor the country.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump official, said Collins fact-checked Trump “masterfully,” and the former president will continue to ramp up his base on social media. She said Trump has to be covered and mentioned how multiple Republicans came out against him after the town hall.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said she did not watch the town hall because she knew he would say “what he always says.” She pointed fingers at the media for allegedly acting like Trump is the only Republican candidate.