Beltway media still can’t seem to imagine that people read beyond whatever narrative is published by the editors of the Washington Post. That’s because those in the corporate press corps remain locked in their own isolated echo chambers.
CNN’s town hall with former President Donald Trump last week was just the latest illustration of D.C. press elites revealing their disconnect from the very people they claim to work for. The first question by CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins wasn’t about the war in Ukraine, recent bank collapses, or the upcoming election in 2024, for which the first debate is three months away. Instead, the CNN anchor pressed the former president on his efforts to “overturn the 2020 election.”
“Your first term ended with a deadly riot at the Capitol, and you still have not publicly acknowledged the 2020 election results,” Collins said. “Why should Americans put you back in the White House?”
It was a predictable question from a predictable host on a predictable network, met with the kind of predictable mockery from the former president who doubled down on a fraudulent contest in traditional Trump terms.
“Unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens,” Trump said. “It was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country.”
Collins wagged her finger.
“It was not a rigged election. It was not a stolen election,” Collins said. “It’s been nearly two-and-a-half years. Can you publicly acknowledge that you did lose the 2020 election?”
Trump refused.
“We’ve really become, in many ways, a third-world country,” the president, who was indicted in March, said.
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Collins didn’t move on from the network’s favorite topic of the last three years for the first 10 minutes of the prime-time program. The episode was greeted by an incredulous press aghast at the sight of the former president refusing to capitulate on his primary grievance since the lockdown-era contest.
“Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters,” ran CNN’s own headline.
“Trump’s Falsehoods and Bluster Overtake CNN Town Hall,” read another in the New York Times.
“Trump Maintains False 2020 Election Claims on CNN Town Hall,” titled coverage in Bloomberg.
The election was, however, rigged against both Trump and American voters who were robbed of a free and fair process.
Three years ago, Democrats and their allies exploited the outbreak of Covid-19 to manipulate state election laws with the radical expansion of mail-in voting, the least secure format to conduct elections. Democrat operatives through Facebook’s Center for Tech and Civic Life, meanwhile, took over the administration of elections and erected ballot boxes in liberal strongholds to gin up turnout. Mark Zuckerberg’s pet project gave more than $400 million to the effort, with only a small fraction of the “Zuckbucks” spent in areas won by President Donald Trump.
[READ: The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen, It Was Bought By Mark Zuckerberg]
Other efforts by Democrats to rig the 2020 contest included turning election day into election season, with voters able to cast ballots weeks before November, absent of the typical safeguards that protect against fraud. Voters cast ballots before blockbuster news from the New York Post implicated President Joe Biden in his son’s potentially criminal overseas business ventures. Even after the stories did drop, however, Big Tech conspired with the corporate press and even federal intelligence agencies to suppress their reach in order to sway the election. Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote an entire 448-page book documenting the myriad of ways Democrats rigged the 2020 contest.
The election integrity crisis led the Republican National Committee to launch a year-round initiative last week to restore transparency and faith in U.S. elections.
It’s clear that neither Collins nor really anybody else in the D.C. press corps who complained about CNN airing electoral falsehoods read anything that either Hemingway or Federalist staff wrote on the issue.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan's email newsletter here.