Former President Donald Trump’s CNN town hall appearance marked a turning point in his media management strategy, as his campaign plans to do more outreach beyond conservative media.
In his first mainstream media remarks since the New Hampshire event last week, Trump joined in for an interview with The Messenger that the network should have boasted about the eyeballs he brought it.
The Messenger asked: “I understand you’ve expressed concerns about Fox, and that one of the reasons you went on CNN is you didn’t want to kind of limit yourself to Fox. And obviously you’re talking to us at The Messenger for our maiden launch, you’re courting social media influencers, you were on the Full Send podcast and you’re talking to others – lots of different media from social media to non-traditional media to mainstream media to new media …”
Here is what Trump said in reply: “Yeah, I’m doing a lot of different media. I was disappointed with Fox. I thought the firing of Tucker [Carlson] was a tremendous mistake. I was very disappointed. And of course, I was disappointed with the coverage of the [2020 presidential] election in particular, the early call in Arizona.”
It has been noted that until last week, Trump largely confined himself to conservative outlets and was embroiled in such a toxic relationship with the network that his crowds used to chant “CNN sucks!” at his rallies. That dynamic began to change after Trump had a falling out with Fox News over its coverage of his 2020 election loss and once CNN started to reboot its coverage under new CEO Chris Licht.
