Donald Trump delivers polished chaos in CNN town hall

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He said the 2020 election was “rigged.” He said former vice-president Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the election. He said he was inclined to pardon “a large portion” of the Jan. 6 rioters, whom he said we were “great people.”

Donald Trump faced the questions of an audience of New Hampshire voters Wednesday night at a televised CNN event at St. Anselm College, a small, 134-year-old institution with a student body about the size of the wintertime population of Dawson City.

And there, at an institution that for decades has provided American presidential candidates a welcome forum for their views, the former president was calm, forceful, fluent. But he was also rambling, unfocused, and combative – and was eager, even gleeful, to present arguments that trampled on well-established truths and contradicted broadly recognized views of his own record and those of his rivals.

The former president’s answers to the voters’ questions were generally unremarkable, repeating positions that he has expressed before. But it is to these questions that he provided at least partial answers:

Does he now present a different profile from his profile as president?

Not a bit. He deflected, he exaggerated, he stuck to his talking points, often talking over Kaitlan Collins, the CNN moderator. And in doing so, he thrilled much of the crowd that clearly enjoyed the way Mr. Trump parried the questions from the moderator. If he was bombastic, it was bombast with a purpose – to remind his supporters that he is a peerless political pugilist. And when he said “Our country is being destroyed by stupid people, very stupid people,” he displayed his intuitive ability to speak in an idiom and with a style that rouses Republicans.

Has he mellowed?

Not in the least. Viewers who tuned in expecting a chastened, modest, contemplative, deferential, reflective, mellifluous or serene Donald Trump surely were disappointed.

Confronted with this week’s verdict in the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault case, for example, he made fun of his accuser, calling her “a whack job,” and speaking of how “the poll numbers just came in and they went up.” He said he was subjected to a “phony impeachment” that was “a waste of time and money.”

Has he softened his rhetoric?

No. Nor did not soften his style. He said the National Archives and Records Administration, staffed by civil servants and archivists, was a leftist agency. He said he was “impeached by a crazy woman named Nancy Pelosi”; no president has ever spoken of a Speaker of the House in that manner. He said to Ms. Collins, “You are a nasty person” and later upbraided her, “You’re so wrong, you don’t know the subject.” And by bickering with Ms. Collins, and waving at her with disdain as if to dismiss her as an irritant, he portrayed himself as a victim of the mainstream media, an element of American culture that, according to the latest Gallup Poll, is respected by only a third of the public.

Does he seem youthful at 76 to Joe Biden at 80?

In his indiscipline in answering questions, he showed remarkable discipline, sticking to his talking points no matter how repeatedly and how forcefully the moderator pressed him. In that regard, he displayed a marked contrast to Mr. Biden.

Does he seem aged in comparison to Ron DeSantis (44), Nikki Haley (51), Tim Scott (57) and Asa Hutchinson (72)?

No. And he projected an asset that the rest do not possess: He clearly entertained the audience. He won ardent applause when he said “I don’t need scripts like a certain person that’s in there now,” a zinger directed to Mr. Biden that electrified the audience.

Does he defend the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021?

Here Mr. Trump bobbed and weaved. He said of those who gathered in front of, and entered, the Capitol, “They were there proud, they were there with love in their heart. It was unbelievable, it was a beautiful day.”

Is he displaying a different campaign style as a veteran from the one he used as a rookie in 2016?

Only in one regard: He’s more polished. And he demonstrated a masterly ability to evade difficult questions. When Ms. Collins asked him whether he wanted Ukraine to prevail in its war with Russia, he repeatedly avoided giving a specific answer, saying instead, “I want everybody to stop dying.”

Did he address the critique that he is the commander in chief of chaos?

In remarks last week before the City Club in Cleveland, former attorney-general William Barr said, “You may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies. He will deliver chaos, and if anything lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be.’’

His appearance Wednesday night did little to dispel the Barr view. But the theme of the Trump persona, and thus of the third Trump presidential campaign, is to embrace chaos rather than to dampen or reject it. The implicit message of the evening was that Mr. Trump remains an outsider who believes chaos is a tool to fight the usual way of doing business in Washington. That is a powerful message in a country where, according to an NBC Poll, 71 per cent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And finally, why did CNN give Mr. Trump this free prime time exposure?

The corporate answer is that this is but the first of several televised town meetings with presidential candidates. The test of the veracity of that statement – the way to determine whether the network simply wanted to buy high ratings with a Trump appearance – is if it offers the same air time to former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, or Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech and finance executive running hard but winning little attention. It very likely will. But this much is certain: Even though Mr. Trump is pursuing a US$475-million defamation suit against the network, CNN wouldn’t have started this series with Mr. Ramaswamy or even Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.