Donald Trump will appear Wednesday night at a New Hampshire town hall meeting, his first public appearance since he was found liable for sexually assaulting author E. Jean Carroll.
The former president will show up at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire at 8 p.m. ET for a confrontation with Kaitlan Collins, a CNN reporter with whom he has clashed several times in the past.
The guests for what will be Trump’s first appearance on the network since 2016 are all set to vote Republican in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump is the leading contender for the GOP’s presidential nomination — and a poll this weekend showed he beat President Joe Biden in the general election — but all eyes will be on the former president to see how he responds to questions about the conviction for assault.
He exploded on Tuesday as part of a witch hunt against him. He has denied Carroll’s allegations and says he will appeal.
“It’s all a scam,” he said in a series of three videos released Thursday night that broke up the court proceedings.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins will moderate City Hall with Donald Trump on Wednesday, 24 hours after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll
Trump has long had a rocky relationship with CNN, which he derided as “fake news” as president, even as former executive Jeff Zucker helped give him his start on “the Apprentice.”
Now he is about to be questioned by Collins, who tried to knock his staff off her chair in the White House briefing room amid strained relations between Trump and the press at large.
The then president also at one point banned Collins from one of his performances at the White House Rose Garden in 2018 when he became angry at her shouted questions in the Oval Office earlier in the day.
In 2019, he mocked the journalist when she pressed him on the US-Mexico border wall.
“You ran your campaign and promised supporters that Mexico is going to pay for the wall,” Collins began before Trump interrupted. “Oh here we go again,” he said.
“And that wall would be made of concrete,” Collins continued. “You said earlier that the wall could be made of steel and right now our government is closed because of a demand from your government that the American taxpayer pays for the wall. How can you then say that you are not keeping that promise to your supporters?’
“A very nice question so nicely put, even though I just answered it,” Trump replied.
“I just told you we just made a trade deal. We will receive billions and billions of dollars, far more than the cost of the wall, he said.
In 2020, Trump attacked Collins and called CNN ‘fake news’ after the network reported on Kim Jong Un’s health
Collins moved to CNN This Morning after serving as a White House correspondent during the Trump administration
In 2020, he also attacked Collins, calling CNN “fake news” after the network reported on Kim Jong Un’s health.
Trump said a report on the ailing dictator was false, and shot Collins when she asked him a question at a press conference.
When she asked if Trump had interacted with Kim, he said, “I don’t want to say. I won’t say that. We have a good relationship with North Korea – as good as you can get. I mean, we have a good relationship with North Korea. I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un and I hope he is well.’
When Collins tried to follow up, he called CNN “fake news” and said, “The problem is you’re not writing the truth.”
CNN is fake news. Do not talk to me’.
It is Trump’s first appearance for a CNN interview since he was elected president in 2016.
And former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who voted for Trump’s second impeachment when she was in the House and served on a committee investigating his actions during the January 6 uprising, launched a television commercial against him on Tuesday,
The ad, which aired on CNN before and after Trump’s town hall meeting, warned viewers that the former president is “a risk America can never take again.”
Cheney narrates the 60-second ad, but does not appear in it. It is funded by its political action committee.
Meanwhile, after Tuesday’s verdict in the Carroll case, numerous commentators took to Twitter to demand that CNN cancel City Hall.
“Is @CNN still going to do town hall with the sexual predator twice impeached rebellious former president @realDonaldTrump? I’m not looking at it. I think it’s absurd that a major news network normalizes Trump,” wrote Alexander S. Vindman, the former Trump White House staffer who testified at Trump’s first impeachment hearing.
“Will @CNN continue tomorrow night with city hall in NH once Trump has passed sentence against him? Another reason why Trump shouldn’t get a platform from CNN or others like it’s 2016 again. #2024PresidentialElection #NHPolities,” wrote Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh.
On Tuesday night, the event was still on. “No programming changes at this point,” a CNN spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
Even before Tuesday’s verdict, both sides of the political aisle questioned the event: Democrats questioned whether Trump should get the airtime, while Republicans questioned whether CNN — which Trump has long criticized as “fake news” — can be fair to the former. president.
CNN has faced calls to cancel the town hall, moderated by Collins, but the network has confirmed there are no changes to the schedule
Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves a Manhattan courthouse after a jury finds former President Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting him
Questions about the appropriateness of giving Trump airtime grew after the ruling in the Carroll case.
Author Michael Marshall Smith tweeted, “CNN *must* cancel its town hall with Trump tomorrow. You can NOT give him any more legitimacy. None of us can. Even the GOP.”
And author Don Winslow noted, “I can’t believe you’d follow what happened in a New York City courtroom today with a town hall for Donald Trump tomorrow. CANCEL IT.”
A jury in New York on Tuesday found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5 million in damages. Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, but found Trump liable for sexual assault and for defaming Carroll after she made her allegations public.
Jurors debated for about three hours before reaching their verdict.
Trump chose not to attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
But he responded in an angry post on his Truth Social platform.
“I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS,” Trump wrote in capital letters on his Truth Social website. “THIS VERDICT IS A SHAME – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH-HUNT OF ALL TIME!”
And his campaign said in a statement, “Make no mistake, this whole bogus thing is a political push against President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be re-elected President of the United States.”
Carroll told the jury that Trump assaulted her at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1995 or 1996, in a version of events that the jury believed at least in part, even when Trump was quoted as being a hoax.
Trump’s statement that he did not know Carroll’s identity came after he failed to correctly identify her in a photo in what may have been a key moment of the trial.
During his videotaped statement, Carroll attorney Roberta Kramer had Trump look at a black-and-white image to identify the group, which included himself.
When asked to identify a woman in the photo, Trump replied, “That’s Marla, that’s my wife.”
Only with the help of his attorney, Alina Habba, did Trump find out that it is, in fact, Carroll.
‘I don’t even know who the woman is. Let’s see, I don’t know who — it’s Marla,” Trump said.
Carroll bowed her head as the verdict in the battery charge was read. As the libel sentence was read, she bowed it again and nodded in agreement. Then she stood up and shook hands with Trump attorney Joe Tacopina.
Carroll left the court beaming from ear to ear without making a statement to the media, but was heard to say to the crowd, “We are very happy.”
Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by more than two dozen women, but this is the only case so far to end up in front of a jury, casting a new shadow over Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign
Carroll, 79, sued for assault under the Adult Survivors Act, a law passed in New York that allowed a one-year period for claims of sexual assault that would normally fall outside the statute of limitations.
Her defamation claim was based on statements made by Trump, 76, when he was president, calling her a liar.