Chris Hayes calls CNN's Trump town hall decision 'hard to defend'

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Wednesday knocked competitor network CNN’s plans to host former President Trump for a town hall event on-air next week. 

“I find it very hard to defend the choice to give him a live platform, no matter how it is dressed up,” Hayes said Wednesday evening on “All in with Chris Hayes.” 

CNN announced earlier this week that Trump, who is running for president in 2024 after losing his 2020 reelection bid, will participate in a CNN town hall event in New Hampshire next week, with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins to moderate. 

Hayes on Wednesday acknowledged the “fraught decisions” surrounding how to report on the controversial former president “as networks begin the work of campaign coverage during a presidential election which centers on the guy who tried to kill American democracy.”

“If he is given live airtime, there is no way to know if he will do something like, I don’t know, give out the personal information about the DA? Something that, once said on a live broadcast, cannot be unsaid and undone,” Hayes said, referencing Trump’s attacks against the Manhattan district attorney who brought charges against him in New York last month. 

MSNBC has opted out of live coverage on some recent Trump events, like the remarks he gave at Mar-a-Lago after his arraignment in the New York case. 

“So far he is just giving his normal list of grievances,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on-air as Trump was speaking last month. “We don’t consider that necessarily newsworthy and there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”

CNN’s decision to air the upcoming town hall live also came under fire this week from some of the hosts at "The View" and others.

Trump has previously bashed reporters at the network as “fake news,” but is reportedly looking to rebuild media relationships as he runs for reelection.