Veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour said she doesn’t agree with the network’s decision to host former President Donald Trump for a town hall last week.
Amanpour flew to the network’s New York headquarters to meet with CNN CEO Chris Licht following the event, she told the crowd during her Columbia Journalism School commencement speech Wednesday night. Face to face, the journalist told her boss her honest thoughts about Trump's appearance and wanted “to hear from him firsthand what he’d been thinking.”
“We had a very robust exchange of views,” said Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, during her speech. “My management believes they did the right thing as service to the American people. I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format.”
Several CNN employees have voiced their dissatisfaction with the town hall, during which Trump continued to push false claims about the 2020 election and defended his actions on Jan. 6.
Ahead of the Columbia speech, Licht sent a note to CNN employees praising Amanpour and encouraging employees to tune in, CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote in his daily newsletter. The CEO was aware that Amanpour planned to address the town hall, a company spokesperson told him.
During an internal call with employees last week — of which POLITICO Playbook obtained a recording — Licht defended the town hall and congratulated moderator Kaitlan Collins for “a masterful performance.”
Amanpour said in her speech that Licht did say that “the execution” of the town hall “was lacking a little” and that he said “we will not witness that same appalling behavior in future town halls.”
Darcy wrote in his newsletter “Reliable Sources” that “Inside CNN, Amanpour is far from alone in her views.”
“In private, the town hall has been widely criticized by employees at all levels across the organization,” Darcy wrote. “Some of these employees believe that Trump wasn't worthy of a town hall platform. ... Others believe that it was a worthy endeavor to confront him, but that the event was poorly executed.”
While Collins attempted to fact check Trump in real time, he mostly dominated the interview. If Amanpour had been in Collins’ seat, she said, “I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person,’ but then that's me. I’ve been in the ring for a long time with many of these people.”
“We know Trump and his tendencies, everyone does,” Amanpour added. “He just seizes the stage and dominates, no matter how much flak the moderator tries to aim at the incoming. It doesn't often work.”
