Former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, is set to partake in a town hall hosted by Fox News next week, NTD has learned.
A spokesperson for the network confirmed with NTD early Friday that the event is set to be pre-taped in Clive, Iowa, on June 1 and air at 9 p.m. ET later that day.
The town hall will be moderated by Sean Hannity, host of the cable news channel’s primetime program, “The Sean Hannity Show.” During the town hall, Hannity will take questions from the audience and speak about a range of topics related to the 2024 presidential race.
Earlier this month, Trump appeared on CNN for the first time in several years to participate in a town hall held at Saint Anselm College. It marked Trump’s first appearance on CNN since before he became president in 2016. It was also the first major televised event of his 2024 presidential campaign.
Throughout the event, Trump presented his vision for the country as he fielded questions from the audience and a CNN moderator, who asked the former commander-in-chief what he would do to tackle skyrocketing prices, the nation’s debt crisis, the U.S. mental health crisis, the Russia–Ukraine war, and more.
Next week’s event will be Trump’s second major town hall on a cable news channel since he announced his third campaign for the White House on Nov. 15, 2022, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump last appeared on Hannity’s program in March to respond to questions about allegations that he might be charged by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. In April, Bragg charged the former president with 34 felony-level counts of falsifying business records related to alleged hush money payments.
Hannity is no stranger to hosting town hall events with Trump. He previously moderated similar events in September 2016 and June 2020.
Trump and Fox
In recent months, Trump’s relationship with Fox News has been frosty. The former president criticized the Rupert Murdoch-owned network for its positive coverage of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Just watching Fox News. … They are desperately pushing DeSanctimonious who, regardless, is dropping like a rock,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “FoxNews has become the DeSanctimonious Network, but it will never work because he doesn’t have the goods. Without my Endorsement, he was a dead man walking. Even with Fox, he’s already pretty close to that again! ” he added.
On May 24, DeSantis posted a video on Twitter hours before he filed paperwork confirming his long expected White House bid, saying he’s running for president “to lead our great American comeback.”
The governor’s entry into the GOP field has been all but confirmed for months, and he is considered the party’s next strongest candidate after Trump, who is currently dominating the field. According to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, Trump has a significant lead over DeSantis.
Fox News this time around has not carried Trump’s rallies or live speeches like it previously did. Some of Trump’s allies, including his former 2016 campaign manager, Steve Bannon, have been especially critical of the network for allegedly cutting or not broadcasting Trump’s live remarks.
“Note to Fox News senior management: When Donald J. Trump talks, it’s newsworthy,” Bannon told a Conservative Political Action Conference crowd in March. “Is there really that much going on at two in the afternoon on Fox News that you can’t cover him live,” he added. “They don’t respect you … they have a fear, a loathing, and a contempt for you.”
Trump Effect
When Trump participated in CNN’s town hall event, the cable news channel garnered 3.12 million total viewers for the 8 p.m. Trump special—far more than the network usually draws on a weeknight, according to Mediaite, citing Nielsen data.
However, the ratings boom did not last for CNN, which has drawn criticism from a range of Democrat and left-wing pundits, who complained about the network giving Trump a platform to speak.
In response to the backlash, CNN CEO Chris Licht was defiant, arguing that Trump enjoys widespread support across the United States.
“While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story,” Licht said on a conference call, according to reports. He noted that the people who clapped are “a large swath of America,” arguing that corporate media outlets have for years failed to acknowledge these people.
In a front-page CNN article and in his email newsletter, media reporter Oliver Darcy appeared to be critical of his employer and Licht. Darcy, a frequent critic of Trump, wrote that “it’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” although he did not provide many specifics in his newsletter.
He described the performance as “Trump’s unhinged social media feed brought to life on stage” and claimed that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins had been “put in an uncomfortable position, given the town hall was conducted in front of a Republican audience that applauded Trump, giving a sense of unintended endorsement to his shameful antics.”
On the other side of the aisle, Fox News contributor Ben Domenech said Trump held a successful forum, telling host Laura Ingraham: “This is exactly the kind of forum in which he succeeds. We know this now. And CNN should know this now.”
Bannon, meanwhile, also praised the former commander-in-chief, saying the CNN town hall was a “humiliation of the mainstream media” and called CNN a “disgrace.”
The Trump 2024 campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.