On Wednesday night, CNN hosted a town hall for Donald Trump, a man you might remember from his brief stint as president of the United States or the terrifying incident when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. If the name still doesn’t ring a bell, he used to be on reality TV!
Well, CNN decided to host a town hall for him, and it is pretty universally agreed that the network did not do a good job. Which raises the question: How would you do it? Simple.
The first — and biggest — mistake CNN made was allowing Trump to have a microphone that was turned on. That way, when he tried to talk over the moderator, mock E. Jean Carroll and spew wild lies about abortion, people could hear him. This was bad. If they had followed the simple protocol of not letting him have a microphone, everyone would have seen his lips moving but heard nothing. Possibly a long, faint, high-pitched whine, like a mosquito.
Indeed, this is optimal: a microphone that is not off, but broken in such a way that you hear something, a horrible high whistling noise that you want to shut off at any cost. That way, instead of laughing gruesomely along with him, the audience would have covered their ears and screamed, “No more! No more of whatever this is!” The only downside of this is we would not have learned that he wants to default on the debt for no clear reason, but that is the kind of information he was bound to share in another venue.
Broadly speaking, any format where you allow him to talk is bad. It is okay if he can nod or point, although you should be vigilant about the kinds of signs that the audience can bring with them so that he cannot put together a nasty sentence by pointing slowly at words in turn.
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Actually, another mistake was having an audience, especially one with questions like, “I worry about all the deaths due to gun violence. I worry they might inconvenience me as a gun owner.” I know what you will say — televising it at all was the big mistake, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well have an audience in the room! But every little bit of audience you don’t let Donald Trump have helps!
Another mistake was having the debate in the venue where it was held, as opposed to a soundproof vault two miles underground! The best vault would be one from which no noise could be heard by viewers or even those walking above. You have to think about these things in advance!
CNN probably thought, “We have a perfectly nice New Hampshire location here, and we can probably tape it there just fine.” But consider: The walls of that venue are not miles thick and made entirely of granite, nor do they sometimes pulse as though something unthinkably vast and impossibly alive is swallowing a meal. Nor do you sometimes hear a rustling and not know what that rustling is, nor is the only way out by passing through a long, damp corridor (But how can it be damp? The walls are rock!) in which your voice should echo but all you hear is silence, or an echo almost a minute later that does not sound quite like your own voice. That is the optimal venue for a Trump town hall.
Another mistake was not having the moderator sit at a desk where she could push a button at any point to open a small portcullis, from which the Thing — the true possessor of the cave, something pus-white and slimily dripping with jaws of enormous size — might roll and ooze its way toward the stage, causing all those who saw it to vomit with terror.
Also, instead of having Trump answer questions like, “Why should Americans put you back in the White House?” they should have made him answer questions like, “Will you be fighting the Thing with a trident or with a net?” And then, instead of letting him talk over the moderator and not answer the question, they should have given him a net or a trident as he chose, and pressed a small button on the wall to admit the Thing. Then, instead of everyone being terrified by how woefully unprepared the news media is for another election cycle with Trump in it, they could be terrified by the noises that the Thing emitted.
Another mistake was ending after the time had elapsed instead of when all the lights flickered suddenly and went out, driving the moderator and crew to rush for the only elevator to the surface and leaving Trump alone with — we cannot say what, exactly. It is too familiar to be a nightmare. Something ancient, and alive, and hungry.
All you have to do is follow those simple instructions and your Trump town hall should be a great success!