Trump's team claims victory in CNN town hall while critics rage.
Donald Trump's team considers the CNN town hall a strategic win, as it gave the campaign material to clip for social media and allowed Trump to play off a live audience of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in New Hampshire. Trump's advisers joked that the event amounted to an hour of Trump infomercials and should be recorded as an in-kind campaign contribution. In contrast, CNN staff were outraged that the network gave Trump a platform to lie to a large audience. Trump's team negotiated the terms of the event with an unusual degree of leverage, including having Kaitlan Collins as the moderator and ensuring pre- and post-town hall coverage featured Trump surrogates on air. However, Trump's own missteps during the town hall may have created more legal headaches for him.