On this week’s second edition of The Editors, our panelists dig into Trump’s CNN town-hall performance. And it really was a performance. As Charlie reminds us, “I have my litany of problems with Trump. I have more of them after that town hall. But let us not pretend that he is not entertaining and that he’s not funny because he is. That is his sort of environment. And unless you can put someone in there who is going to be able to punch back . . . then you’re going to get that result because Donald Trump is very talented. . . . We’re barreling towards the same dynamic we got in 2020.”

Trump’s personality may win him some applause, but his obsession with January 6 is skewing his perception of voters’ feelings. Noah points this out, saying, “This should be an elementary observation, but it doesn’t seem to be.” He emphasized, “People don’t like what happened on January 6. Donald Trump and MAGA voters seem to think that they can muscle into the public consciousness a reinterpretation of events of that day. You can’t. . . . The stuff that killed you in 2022 . . . it’s the 2020 election-fraud narrative, which was the predicate for the sacking of the Capitol of the United States.”