Michael Fanone claims CNN declined to run op-ed critical of network for hosting Trump town hall

Gideon Rubin
May 4, 2023

Washington Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone testifies during the House select committee hearing on the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 27, 2021. - Andrew Harnik/Pool/TNS

CNN contributor and former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone alleges the network declined to run an op-ed critical of its decision to host a Donald Trump town hall next week, Puck News reports.

The cable network is scheduled to host the town hall May 10. CNN Anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event.

Fanone, who was badly beaten in the Jan. 6 insurrection, blasted the network for giving the former president who is currently under investigation for his role in the attack on the Capitol. Fanone received an electrical shock to his neck and was beaten with a flagpole in the attack on the Capitol.

Fanone told Puck News that “allowing Donald Trump an open forum on a major television news network is the moral equivalent of putting an AR-15 in the hands of someone mentally unstable.”

Puck reports that the Trump town hall is part of CNN chairman and C.E.O. Chris Licht’s efforts to broaden its audience to attract more conservative and centrist viewers.

Fanone also pitched the op-ed to The New York Times and The Washington Post and offered to participate in a debate.

Airing the Trump town hall reflects the challenges networks face in presenting a diversity of opinions in politically polarized times.

Puck’s Dylan Byers writes: “Of course, there’s no way for Licht to reposition CNN as a nonpartisan, all-voices-welcome mass-market news network without treating Trump the same way the network treats the other candidates. Surreal as it may be, Trump is the Republican frontrunner, and that is a fact all media organizations have to reckon with."

“Indeed, one of Licht’s primary critiques of his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, has been the way he programmed the Trump show, first enabling the candidate’s early stardom with empty podium footage and then repositioning as the network de la resistance against the president and all his perfidy. But that critique arguably under-appreciates just how challenging it is to cover a candidate who lies and misleads with apparent impunity and nevertheless commands the loyalty of at least a third of the nation.

“Licht will now be forced to wrestle with that challenge first hand, and he will have to walk a fine line: remaining noncombative while also adhering to basic journalistic principles of accountability in truth—and, of course, making it interesting enough to command an audience that, one year in, doesn’t seem particularly excited about what he’s selling. Good luck.”