MSNBC President Signals Openness to a Trump Town Hall–With ‘Parameters’

MSNBC President Rashida Jones speaks onstage during Voto Latino's "Our Voices" Celebration at Decatur House in Washington on April 28, 2023. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Voto Latino

MSNBC president Rashida Jones suggested her network would be open to hosting a town hall event for former Republican President Donald Trump if certain “parameters” were in place.

“We’re having conversations with all of the candidates across our entire newsgroup about how to bring their point of view to the audience,” Jones told Axios reporter Sara Fischer at the Cannes Lions Festival on June 19.

“There are lots of ways to do that, whether it’s a live interview, whether it’s a tape interview, or whether it’s a town hall, whether it’s a debate,” she continued. “I don’t know that a town hall tomorrow is something that our audience is looking for, or any audience, but as you look at the next 505 days [until the presidential election], I think you’ll see a lot of that across the portfolio.”

Fischer asked whether the network would consider having such a town hall-style event with Trump, the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, if he requested.

“If Trump came to you specifically and says, ‘I want to be on your air to do it,’ would you say yes?” Fischer asked.

“Would I say yes? It would be a conversation. I think you’d have to put parameters about how to control the environment,” Jones said.

The MSNBC president’s response came after CNN conducted a town hall event featuring Trump in New Hampshire on May 10. The contentious prime-time forum—which was met with furious criticism from left-wing pundits as well as from CNN’s own staffers—delivered a much-needed ratings boost for the cable news channel.

The Trump special, moderated by CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins, had over 3 million viewers—far more than the network usually draws in for the 8 p.m. time-slot. That figure included some 703,000 viewers from the 25–54 age demographic deemed crucial for advertisers,  Nielsen data showed.

With the 70-minute program, CNN beat out its rivals to become the most-watched cable news network on the evening of May 10.

In March, CNN averaged around 473,000 viewers during prime-time hours, data shows. That was behind both MSNBC and Fox News.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Town Hall with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on May 10, 2023, in a still from a video. CNN/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

However, a plethora of left-wing lawmakers and pundits criticized CNN for platforming Trump. Some of the network’s employees also publicly expressed their disagreement.

“I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format,” CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour said at Columbia Journalism School, according to CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter on May 17.

Liberals are already criticizing the MSNBC president’s openness to interviewing the former president.

Keith Olbermann, a former MSNBC host and a Trump critic, said on Twitter, “MSNBC needs a new president. This one left the door open to a live Trump Town Hall.”

In a separate Twitter post on June 19, he wrote, “Once again you have my most sincere apologies for what @msnbc has become and for the utter inert response from hosts who have long since abrogated their responsibilities to keep management in line, in exchange for large sums of money that keep them compliant.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to MSNBC for comment.

Trump’s 2024 Media Strategy

It’s also unclear if Trump would consider giving an interview to MSNBC at all. Since the end of the last election cycle, Trump has largely limited himself to interviews with conservative media outlets and social media influencers.

The May 10 town hall-style event marked Trump’s first appearance on CNN since 2016.

In a later interview with The Messenger published on May 15, Trump said he was “surprised by the level of hostility” during the CNN program.

“I thought they would be neutral and even better than that so they could get the viewers back. And they had one of the best [viewership] days in years. So you would think they would claim success,” Trump said.

“I was amazed to see that they were traumatized by what took place. They were actually traumatized. I think that instead of acting the way they did, they should have said, ‘We had a tremendous ratings night, one of the best in years, many years,’ and spiked the football, right?”

Former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31, 2022. The Epoch Times

But the Republican presidential candidate also suggested he would need mainstream media for his 2024 campaign.

“I’m doing a lot of different media,“ Trump told The Messenger. ”I was disappointed with Fox. I thought the firing of Tucker [Carlson] was a tremendous mistake. I was very disappointed. And of course, I was disappointed with the coverage of the [2020 presidential] election, in particular, the early call in Arizona.”

“I’m talking to people that I respect. And CNN very much wanted to do this interview. And I did it and I do other interviews like I’m doing the one for you now,” Trump continued.

“The one thing I find is that if get ratings, they know it, they cover you. Even if they say they’re not going to. ”

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.