CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour said Wednesday that she would have “dropped the mic” after former President Trump’s “nasty person” remark at a CNN town hall last week.
“For me, I would have dropped the mic at nasty person,” Amanpour said at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s commencement. “But then that’s me. I’ve been in the ring for a long time with many of these people.”
Trump snapped at CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins at last week’s town hall, calling her a “nasty person” after she repeatedly asked the former president about his handling of classified documents.
The network has faced backlash over its decision to hold the town hall, after Trump reiterated his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” suggested that those who descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had “love in their heart,” and called the woman who has accused him of rape a “whack job.”
Amanpour said she met with CNN CEO Chris Licht to “hear from him firsthand what he’d been thinking” about the town hall and “had a very robust exchange of views.”
“My management believes they did the right thing, a service to the American people,” she said. “Some reports have written about important new thoughts and things that we learned from Trump’s very mouth that night.”
“I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format,” Amanpour said, adding: “We know Trump and his tendencies, everyone does. He just seizes the stage and dominates. No matter how much flack the moderator tries to aim at the incoming, it doesn’t often work.”