Trump to Participate in CNN Town Hall in New Hampshire
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Former president Trump will participate in a presidential town hall hosted by CNN in New Hampshire next week to answer questions from Republican and independent residents who intend to vote in the 2024 primary.
Anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event, which will take place on Wednesday, May 10 at 9 p.m. EST. Trump’s planned appearance comes after he hinted on his social-media platform, Truth Social, recently that he would consider boycotting at least one of the GOP primary debates because of potentially adversarial moderators.
“Going outside the traditional Republican ‘comfort zone’ was a key to President Trump’s success in 2016. Some other candidates are too afraid to take this step in their quest to defeat Joe Biden, and are afraid to do anything other than Fox News,” a Trump adviser told CNN. “CNN executives made a compelling pitch.”
Trump is the front runner of a small cast of GOP presidential contenders such as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, radio host Larry Elder, and entrepreneur and conservative pundit Vivek Ramaswamy. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced last month that he would not be entering the contest as it was not the right timing for him and his family. Former vice president Mike Pence suggested recently that he plans to make a decision regarding a 2024 bid “by June.” Governor DeSantis, deemed perhaps the most formidable potential competitor to Trump, has not yet declared his candidacy.
Trump was polling at 57 percent among Republicans and independents who lean Republican in a head-to-head matchup with DeSantis for the 2024 presidential primary, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted at the end of March. Many pundits chalked up Trump’s popularity bump to the media hype surrounding his indictment by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. The case involved alleged hush money payments he made to porn star Stormy Daniels leading up to the 2016 election.
President Biden last week launched his 2024 reelection campaign on a platform titled “Let’s Finish the Job.” In a promotional video that played clips from the January 6 Capitol Riot and pro-abortion protests at the Supreme Court following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Biden said we are in a “battle for the soul of America.”
