CNN CEO Chris Licht encouraged former President Donald Trump to “have fun” in a backstage exchange moments before the start of the town hall.
Before taking the stage at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, Trump reportedly crowed to the cable news boss that he was about to boost CNN’s ratings.
Licht nodded in response, then told Trump to “have a good conversation and have fun,” two people familiar with the interaction told the Guardian.
The contentious town hall with the Republican front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination turned out to be a ratings bonanza for struggling CNN. The broadcast raked in 3.3 million viewers, the cable network’s highest total in two years.
Trump took a victory lap Thursday to gloat over the “sky high ratings” he delivered.
“It was by far the biggest show of the night, the week and the month!” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump claimed that his Wednesday night performance was “sheer brilliance.”
However, Licht has had to face a “fury of criticism — both internally and externally over the event,” CNN reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter.
Longtime anchor Anderson Cooper told his viewers that they “have every right to be angry and never watch this network again” during the opening monologue of Thursday’s “AC360°.”
Licht had defended his decision to host the town hall during a 9 a.m. editorial meeting earlier that day with his worked-up staff, sources told The Post.
“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them,” Licht said, according to the audio provided to The Post.
He also rejected suggestions that moderator Kaitlan Collins didn’t push back hard enough on Trump’s claims about the “rigged” 2020 election.
“Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news,” the CNN CEO reportedly told staffers, adding that making news “is our job.”
Collins, the co-anchor of “CNN This Morning,” defended Licht’s decision to host the Trump town hall while stepping in to host the 9 p.m. slot Thursday.
She called the 70-minute town hall “a major inflection point in the Republican Party’s search for its nominee.”
Collins, who’s rumored to be taking over a primetime anchor chair, went on to remind viewers “to remember that [Trump] is right now the GOP front-runner” despite the fact that he was “criminally indicted, found civilly liable and [is] under investigation for everything from his handling of classified documents to his business empire.”
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