CNN ratings tank alongside their reputation after Trump 'town hall'

On May 10, CNN CEO Chris Licht turned over his network to Donald Trump. He filled an auditorium in New Hampshire with hand-selected Trump supporters. He instructed them to cheer for their man, and not to express any disapproval. He purposely stranded host Kaitlan Collins in a position where she had no means of preventing Trump from bullying her, speaking over her questions, or simply bypassing her to stir his crowd into a frenzy. Trump loved it so much that he stuck around well after the cameras stopped rolling, bantering with the adoring crowd. Thanks to CNN, Trump had a very good night.

Licht thought it was a good night for CNN as well. The event pulled in over 3 million viewers, allowing CNN to momentarily top Fox as the most-viewed cable channel. Better still, in Licht’s view, CNN “Made a LOT of news,” he wrote to his staff the morning after the event. “And that is our job." Oddly enough, many people still believe that the job of a news network is to report the news, not create it.

Now the numbers are in a week after the broadcast, and as The Daily Beast reports, Licht’s effort to turn CNN into a right-wing news engine resulted in exactly the sort of disaster anyone might have predicted: bringing CNN its lowest ratings in eight years, sinking to less than half the viewers of MSNBC, and even falling below radical right outlet Newsmax.