The Ratings Are In: No One Really Watched CNN’s Trump Town Hall

CNN’s decision to host a town hall with twice-impeached, criminally indicted, convicted sexual abuser Donald Trump did not pay off, with the event garnering just a mere fraction of the former president’s previous viewers.

The Wednesday night event was jam-packed with some of Trump’s greatest hits: lies, misogynistic attacks, election conspiracy theories, and insults leveled at anyone who tried to fact-check him. Countless people in the news media, including CNN employees, have slammed the town hall and the network for hosting it.

But even though many news outlets, The New Republic included, remain absolutely gobsmacked at the prime-time train wreck we witnessed Wednesday night, it turns out that not that many people witnessed it with us. The town hall averaged just 3.1 million viewers.

For comparison, almost 71.5 million people watched Trump win the 2016 election. In 2020, later, an average of 21.6 million viewers watched the Republican National Convention—far fewer than the previous election, but still miles away from Wednesday night.

That’s got to sting for Trump, who cares deeply about television ratings. Throughout his presidency, he was obsessed with how many people tuned in to watch his speeches, more so than the actual content of his speech. This gave us many reality television–style gems intended to attract more eyeballs, such as waving a Q-tip around during a coronavirus briefing or giving Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union.

When everyone was either trapped at home or sick with Covid-19, Trump bragged repeatedly that his daily briefings got some of the highest ratings on television. And in February, he posted an internal “viewership report” on Truth Social claiming that the ratings for his visit to East Palestine, Ohio, were “off the charts”—even though no major network covered the trip.

It’s funny that someone so ratings-obsessed got such terrible ratings, but an even better idea would have been not giving Trump that kind of a platform in the first place.

The pandemic-era public health emergency measure known as Title 42, which allows officials to turn away individuals at the border regardless of whether they are seeking asylum, is set to expire this evening.

Lawmakers of both parties, particularly those representing states that border Mexico, have worried that the lifting of Title 42 will result in more migrants fleeing their countries seeking to enter the United States, causing bottlenecks at ports of entry and straining resources at the border. Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democrat-turned-independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema introduced legislation last week effectively extending Title 42 for two years, which the two argue will give Congress the time to negotiate broader immigration reform legislation.

“It is our goal to get a bill to the president’s desk to actually make some meaningful difference in addressing this crisis, and relieve the pressure on border states like Arizona,” Sinema told reporters in a “pen and pad” sitdown—a rare occasion, as Sinema almost never speaks to the press. Sinema also slammed what she saw as the Biden administration’s insufficient response to the end of the policy, saying that the White House’s “willful failure to prepare for the end of Title 42 means that my state bears the brunt of the crisis that is coming.”

The bill is also supported by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin, Sherrod Brown, and Jon Tester, all of whom are up for reelection in 2024 in red states. But multiple attempts to pass immigration reform bills of any significance over the past 15 years have foundered. In 2013, a reform measure that passed on a bipartisan basis was blocked in the House; Congress has only become more polarized, and less amenable to broad bipartisan immigration reform, in the past 10 years. (Sinema did not reply to my question on how the political conditions have changed since 2013, remarking instead that she liked my dress.) Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is also developing his own legislation to address Title 42.

Meanwhile, the House will vote on a sweeping border enforcement bill on Thursday afternoon, which President Joe Biden has vowed to veto—not that it will make it to his desk in the first place, as the measure will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

On Wednesday, Representative Rashida Tlaib, the first female member of Congress of Palestinian descent, sponsored an event raising awareness about the Nakba.* Known as “the catastrophe,” the Nakba refers to the ongoing series of events beginning in 1948 that led to the persecution and displacement of Palestinians, and the occupation of Palestine that continues today.

The event, originally planned to take place at the Capitol Visitor Center, sought to “uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians,” according to an event page.

Apparently such a notion—reflection, education, conversation—was too much for some.

First, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy intervened and blocked the event from happening as planned, booking the room where the event was meant to be held.

McCarthy accused the event of trafficking in “antisemitic tropes about Israel.” (If McCarthy was suggesting it’s antisemitic to draw attention to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, well, conflating a state’s violent actions with Jewish people more broadly is actually antisemitic.)

Nevertheless, the event went on. Jewish Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed the event to be held in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Senate committee room, which is under his jurisdiction. But still, the blowback continued.

“I wholeheartedly disapprove of the Majority permitting the use of the HELP Committee room for this divisive event,” Senator Bill Cassidy, ranking member of the HELP committee, said in a statement. “The Capitol Grounds should not be used as a pedestal to legitimize anti-Semitic bigotry.”

Senator Jacky Rosen became the first Senate Democrat to speak against the event. “Calling the establishment of the world’s only Jewish state a ‘catastrophe’ is deeply offensive, and I strongly disagree with allowing this event to be held on Capitol Hill,” she said. Rosen’s comments seemed to erase the core concern that the history of the state has been catastrophic specifically for Palestinians. Instead, Rosen purported that organizers suggest it is catastrophic more broadly for Jewish people to have a safe place to call home.

Shortly after canceling the event, McCarthy pledged to “host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” unwittingly affirming America’s bipartisan commitment to the displacement and violence that has been inflicted upon Palestinians since 1948.

Nevertheless, the lengths McCarthy and anti-Palestinian groups went to to cancel the event did not prevail.

Meanwhile, Thursday marks one year since Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier, as she reported on an Israeli military invasion of a refugee camp in occupied Palestine. Independent investigations have concluded she was the victim of a targeted killing, despite (or perhaps because of her) wearing a blue vest with “PRESS” clearly written on it.

And yet, one year later, Israel has faced no consequences for killing an American citizen.

Nor, of course, has Israel faced consequences for its ongoing violence against Palestinians. At least 123 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces this year—about one a day. The number is probably higher, as Israel continues airstrikes on Gaza.

This lack of accountability—all while Israel has ratcheted up its violent attitudes toward Palestinians—reveals why Tlaib’s Nakba event was so needed. America as an entity and as a group of people largely imagines itself to be honorable, pursuant to the light of democracy, at the very least, to be trying its best. It cannot fulfill any of that without knowing the story of the Nakba and how its legacy of displacement and disrespect toward Palestinians is so clearly part of our contemporary times.

* This piece originally misstated that Tlaib is the first member of Congress of Palestinian descent.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Thursday that will allow doctors and health insurance companies to deny care to anyone they want.

Under the new law, “a health care provider or health payor has the right to opt out of participation in or payment for any health care service on the basis of a conscience-based objection,” meaning based on their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

Providers and insurers will face no consequences under the measure and will not be required to refer patients to a place that would provide the needed care. If they are penalized for denying care or coverage, the doctor or company can sue.

The law makes no mention of protections against gender- or race-based discrimination, leading opponents to rightly worry that the sweeping nature of the text will let providers deny care or coverage to women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. A doctor could deny care, for instance, if they are “morally opposed” to gender-affirming care, or if they don’t like that a patient is having premarital sex. And it’s not just doctors—under the law, insurance companies, nurses, pharmacists, hospitals, ambulances, and more could all also deny care.

“This bill is a broad license for health care providers and insurance companies to refuse services to people. No one should be denied access to medical care,” said Brandon Wolf, the press secretary for Equality Florida. “This puts patients in harm’s way, is antithetical to the job of health care providers, and puts the most vulnerable Floridians in danger.”

Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the ACLU of Florida, had previously warned that the bill left too much room for subjectivity in determining criteria for care. “There is no definition of ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ in the bill. Who determines what constitutes a sincerely held moral or ethical belief, and more importantly, why should access to health care be denied based on such vague, imprecise, and subjective terms?” she said in a statement.

This law is one of the latest moves in Florida Republicans’ unrelenting attacks on people’s rights and access to health care. They have taken particular aim at women and LGBTQ people. Just last week, the legislature passed a bill that would let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care. DeSantis has also signed a law banning abortion at six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant, that will decimate abortion access throughout the South.

Louisiana House Republicans rejected multiple bills aimed at making abortion marginally easier to access, an unbelievably cruel move that denies exceptions even for child victims of sexual abuse.

Abortion has been banned in Louisiana since Roe v. Wade was overturned, with exceptions only to save the pregnant person’s life or if the fetus is not expected to survive. However, two doctors must agree that the fetus is nonviable, adding a significant burden to the patient.

The House Criminal Justice Committee heard a package of abortion bills on Wednesday intended to barely ease restrictions on the procedure. One bill would have exempted all rape and incest victims from the abortion ban, but it failed in a 10–5 vote, with Republicans voting against the measure and Democrats and the one independent voting for it. Another would have specifically allowed child victims of rape and incest to get abortions. The bill was voted down, again along party lines.

Following those two votes, lawmakers deferred the other bills. One would have only fined doctors for performing an abortion, instead of sentencing them to jail time. It also would have allowed only one doctor to determine that a pregnancy was medically futile, instead of requiring two opinions. The bill’s sponsor deferred the measure so she could write amendments to it that might garner more support from committee Republicans.

Doctors and abortion rights advocates who testified in the committee hearing warned that the bill would have huge negative consequences for all residents of Louisiana, particularly children. They beseeched the committee to think about what would happen if one of their own female relatives were raped.

“By forcing survivors to give birth, you are forcing them to forever be connected to their rapist,” said sexual assault survivors’ advocate Morgan Lamandre. “In Louisiana, men are allowed to choose the mother of their children regardless of what the mother wants.”

Democratic Representative Cedric Glover, who sponsored the bill to create exceptions for child victims, pointed out that “if the roles were reversed in regards to which of the sexes have the burden of bearing children, this would be an issue that men would look at differently.”

“This issue is about choices,” he said. The bill’s opponents “spoke of women who regretted having availed themselves of a choice to an abortion after being raped. That was still a choice available to them.”

Although most Louisiana residents support abortion access, the majority of state legislators—both Republicans and Democrats, including Governor John Bel Edwards—oppose it. But Edwards and other members of his party had hoped to ease the state’s draconian restrictions a bit.

“I love Louisiana,” one woman testified during the hearing, after detailing how she survived a decade of sexual abuse at the hands of her grandparents. “For the future survivors that love Louisiana, it’s time Louisiana loved us back.”