SOME would argue that the most shocking thing about former President Donald Trump’s televised “town hall” on CNN last Wednesday (May 10) was that a major news network, regarded by both critics and supporters as a liberal outlet, decided to permit the disgraced Republican president and now a front-runner for the presidential nomination of the GOP, a platform to broadcast what amounted to campaign publicity. It even instructed the moderator to address Trump as “Mr President”.

Others would note the irony that the media event during which the former president raised the importance of law and order and traditional family values and vowed to “make America great again” took place a day after a New York jury decided that Trump had committed sexual abuse and then defamed his victim.

And then there was the former president accusing the American mainstream media, including CNN, of spreading “lies” and “fake news” and doing just that on live television. He insisted once again that he had won the 2020 presidential election that the Democrats and the liberal media, including CNN, had stolen from him. And he lauded his imaginary accomplishments as president, including supposedly completing the construction of the famous wall across the US border with Mexico and helping pass the “largest tax cut in history”.