Trump, the candidate, should never be allowed on live television again. As his behavior last night on CNN made clear — if it wasn’t clear already — he can barely utter a complete sentence without telling a lie, exaggerating or uttering an insult. The interviewer might try to stop him, correct him and expose him, but he just keeps on talking and spewing lies. He’s a bully.
I used to have a local TV show, and it was live. Viewers liked it that way — in part, I suspect, because when a show is live anything can happen or go wrong (and, on Rodricks For Breakfast, it often did!). Live telecasts and cablecasts are fraught with all kinds of possibilities.
We like to test political candidates on live TV because it’s a way of measuring their smarts, their wits and their command of facts.
With Trump, that no longer makes sense. It’s just bad journalism — that is, not journalism at all — to give a man who, according to The Washington Post, lied more than 30,000 times during his presidency — access to a live format.
We have all seen his act; we have heard all his lies about the 2020 election and his defense of the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. He’s been judged a sexual offender and he’s the first former president to be charged with a crime, and that crime has, at its root, a lie.
He’s like your bad, ruddy-faced uncle who can’t be trusted to stay out of the liquor cabinet.
Trump can’t be trusted to stick to facts. He needs to be checked at every step.
The way to do that responsibly is to record an interview with him and check everything he says before airing it. The cable channel or network that conducted the interview would produce and promote a fact-checked hour with Trump, offering him ample opportunity to speak his mind, followed instantly by a graphic or voiced statement scoring his veracity, correcting what he said or calling out his outright lies.
That’s not censorship. That’s called responsible journalism. That’s a show I would eagerly watch.
Dan Rodricks 
I watched that liar, insurrectionist, traitor last night. We knew the assigned “moderator” would be Trump’s lunch. I am female, but in this case it should have been a male like Jim Acosta (who Trump hates) as moderator. Chris Licht needs to be fired. He has destroyed whatever was left of CNN. But his decision makes sense ’cause Licht’s boss is an extreme right winger. It was nothing but a free MAGA rally, not a town hall. 90% of those in the audience worked or previously worked for Trump. An ugly set up by CNN to get viewers. And your suggestion about the pre-check of facts? No, he should NEVER be given another Live platform. Didn’t get much sleep after watching this insanity.
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