CNN’s Christiane Amanpour denounced her own news outlet on Wednesday for featuring former President Donald Trump in a controversial live town hall last week.

That’s right: In the name of democracy, somehow, the veteran journalist believes a former president of the United States — and possibly the next president — should not be allowed to speak.

This is undemocratic, to say the least.

Amanpour made her case at the graduation ceremony for the Columbia School of Journalism, explaining, “For me, of course, the fact that the American people voted three times against Trump and Trumpism: 2018, 2020, 2022 also speaks volumes … people have had the opportunity to make their choices, and they have done it.”

Sixty-four million people also voted for Trump in 2016. Trump got almost 74 million votes in 2020. According to the 2021 U.S. census, there are 258,327,312 people of eligible voting age in the U.S.

Why should any news outlet of note not feature a former president and current Republican presidential front-runner ? Why should a national leader supported by a quarter to a third of the country not be heard?

Because Amanpour apparently believes the press’s job is to be the gatekeeper of what the public is allowed and not allowed to hear.

“Be truthful, but not neutral,” Amanpour said.

What does that mean, exactly? Truthful according to whom? Between the COVID-19 pandemic and Russiagate , I could bore you with a litany of influential stories the establishment press got completely wrong.

“Bothsidesism is not always objectivity,” she continued. “It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective or truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule, and it is in weighing all the sides and hearing all the evidence, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating.”

Amanpour is being vague here. Shouldn’t the viewer hear all sides and draw his or her own conclusions? Isn’t that part of having a free press? Perhaps CNN should just air President Joe Biden throughout the 2024 presidential election. He never utters anything but the “truth,” right?

“There is a 100% connection,” she said, “between a robust, independent, free, and fair press and a functioning democracy and the advance of human rights and justice.”

“We need to seek to provide and defend the truth,” she added.

Okay.

Amanpour’s CNN colleague Anderson Cooper gave a more democratic version of “truth” than any yarn she was spinning.

Cooper consoled left-leaning viewers upset by Trump, saying, "The man you were so disturbed to see last night, that man is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president. You have every right to be outraged today, angry, and never watch this network again, but do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?"

Amanpour appears to think that, as do many left-leaning Americans: that they should be insulated from Americans who disagree with them and hold that restrictive environment up as “democracy.”

They genuinely believe allowing other views is a threat. It’s bizarre.

A tweet by sports writer Jemele Hill about the Trump event succinctly described this widespread leftist mindset (italics mine): "CNN got exactly what it wanted out of the Trump town hall — ratings, buzz and a bat signal to conservative viewers that their views are now more welcomed. It’s heartbreaking and destructive for journalism and democracy, but it was a win for the network in every way."

It seems like being more inclusive and having a broader audience was the thinking behind the town hall. New CNN CEO Chris Licht reportedly said to staff in a meeting that the town hall was "an important part of the story" and that the audience for the Trump event represented "a large swath of America."

"The mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist,” Licht added. “Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists.”

You can’t ignore it. Christiane Amanpour thinks we should. For democracy.

Jack Hunter ( @jackhunter74 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.