Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC said Wednesday that Donald Trump’s CNN town hall was “not news,” so she ditched a post-mortem on the former president’s prime-time “lies, smears and bigotry.” (Watch the video below.)
Rubbing her hands, cracking her knuckles and exhaling, the “11th Hour” host began:
“Okie dokie, folks. It is not news what happened tonight at 8 p.m. on another network. And there is no sense in fact-checking or replaying the highlights. We are not going to analyze the former president of the United States repeating lies, smears and bigotry. We’ve all heard it many many times before.”
Trump marked his return to CNN after a long absence with a torrent of falsehoods about the 2020 election, an insult of moderator Kaitlan Collins and an outrageous claim that he had a plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours (without revealing it).
While Trump may have been up to business as usual. Ruhle seemed determined to avoid that at her end.
“What we need to do tonight is solve for how news organizations will cover Donald J. Trump, the twice-impeached, indicted, liable-for-sex-abuse private citizen,” the host said. “If he does in fact win the Republican nomination, it has nothing to do with what he did tonight. He did what he has done countless times before. The question we need to answer is what we are all going to do next.”