Savannah Guthrie praised for Trump town hall performance
Journalist and host Savannah Guthrie received high remarks for her performance during Donald Trump's televised town hall.
President Donald Trump faced tough questions and rebuttal from host Savannah Guthrie during his recent town hall to address voters.
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The town hall event aired on NBC, the network originally chosen to broadcast a second debate between Trump and his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. As theGrio reported, the new format was chosen after POTUS decided not to participate in a remote debate citing that the format allowed him to be cut off whenever the moderator or network wanted.
NBC faced backlash for deciding to give the president the airtime for his own town hall.
While many feared the event would give Trump more uninterrupted and unchallenged platform to spread misinformation, Guthrie held the President accountable, questioning his social media behavior, prior statements, and offering a rebuttal to his responses.
“Why would you send a lie like that to your followers?” Guthrie about his retweet of a conspiracy theory that Biden coordinated an effort to have Seal Team 6 killed to cover up the fake death of Osama Bin Laden, according to CBS News.
“You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever!”
Trump was defiant in his answer saying he used social media to send out his messages to the public that they could then make their own decisions on.
“That was a retweet, that was an opinion of somebody, and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there, people can decide for themselves, I don’t take a position,” the president said.
When pressed about QAnon, a right-wing conspiracy theory that alleges that a Satanic cabal runs a global pedophilia ring, Trump said that he didn’t know much, although the theory says that the cabal is targeting Trump for trying to expose them.
“I know nothing about it,” Trump said. “I just don’t know about QAnon. I know nothing about it…but what I do know about it, is that they are very against pedophiles,” Trump answered.
The interaction was captured and uploaded to Twitter by political journalist Sarah Reese Jones.
The commander-in-chief was pressed about his response to COVID-19, not wearing a mask and his own experience with the coronavirus. He could not confirm that he was tested on the day of the first debate between the two candidates and also said he is not tested daily, despite prior claims.
President Trump was not a fan of Guthrie’s work as a moderator. According to The Washington Post, the president said, “I knew you’d be doing this. … You always do this,” complaining that Joe Biden was offered an easier line of questioning during a similar event with Lester Holt.
At the same time on ABC, Biden hosted his own town hall moderated by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to take questions from voters. According to theGrio, the hopeful 46th president addressed his political history including his role in the controversial 1994 crime bill, which he called a “mistake.”
“Yes, it was. But here’s where the mistake came. The mistake came in terms of what the states did locally,” Biden responded when asked if he had any regret in his support of the bill.
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Since both candidates aired their town hall events on the same day and time, a natural competition for ratings resulted. According to CNN Business, Biden took the top spot. The outlet found Biden’s town hall averaged 14.1 million viewers, while his opponent averaged 10.6 million viewers on the NBC broadcast network, 1.74 million viewers on MSNBC, and on CNBC, about 671,000 viewers. Those viewer totals were about one million fewer than Biden’s audience on the singular channel.
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