The Cable News Network, in an apparent desire to torture its viewers, decided that a one-hour candidate town hall required a two-hour post-show analysis. Which, in this case, was about one hour and 40 minutes too many.
Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) participated in the New Hampshire town hall hosted by Wolf Blitzer. The forum itself was fairly amicable, there were no ridiculous gotcha questions from Blitzer, and no obvious Democrat activist plants in the audience. Except for the one failed Senate candidate who tried to get his 15 seconds of fame with an immigration question, there was really nothing notable about the town hall.
The post-show’s panel analysis of DeSantis’ performance was in agreement that he did well. Even noted DeSantis hater Ana Navarro, in her own back-handed way and in a manner reminiscent of her exchanges with her fellow bitter harridans on ABC’s The View, acknowledged that DeSantis had a good evening and took notice of his overall growth on the stump:
ANA NAVARRO: In addition to what he said to all of those issues, it's also his interaction, right? He’s begun to resemble a human. I mean it's taken him nine months of doing this, to learn how to smile, to learn how to call somebody asking the question by their name, to start telling cute anecdotes about his childhood playing baseball, and things like that. I mean my gosh, the man has some…
Alas, there is only so much DeSantis praise that CNN can handle across TWO studio panels, so the show very quickly moved on. Twenty minutes in. So what did CNN choose to do with all that spare time?
Much of the first hour were spent on discussions of race, specifically: Nikki Haley’s statement that the United States has never been a racist country, including interviews with Trump and Haley surrogates on that very statement, among other things.
There was the panel discussion of Senator Ted Cruz’ endorsement of Trump, including a relitigation of their bitter 2016 primary battle, before going back to Trump’s attacks on his 2024 rivals.
How pressed was CNN to fill time? They then dug up former Congressman Robert Francis O’Rourke to discuss border security, and to urge Biden to grant amnesties and refuse a border deal currently being worked on.
The show then veered into Trump’s federal defamation suit in New York before going back to the campaign. Charts were shown. Finally, coverage of remarks by a Trump associate.
I’m not clear what the need was to fill two studios, for a post-analysis show that only really devoted about 20 minutes to its actual subject matter.
You may be inclined to feel sympathies for my enduring this nonsense, but as Hyman Roth said to Don Michael Corleone: This is the business we’ve chosen.
