Jake Tapper’s Mike Pence Town Hall Shows CNN Making Good on Promise to be a Safe Place for Republicans

Wednesday night was an important night for Chris Licht and his vision for CNN, the network he took over in the spring of this year.

Jake Tapper hosted a special CNN Town Hall featuring former Vice President Mike Pence, who is promoting a new tell-all book in advance of an expected run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Tapper treated his guest with the respect and fairness one might expect, and yet was still able to fact-check the former VP in a manner that Pence did not receive from ABC’s David Muir, CBS’s Margaret Brennan, or, of course, Fox News’s Sean Hannity or Fox & Friends, where Pence had appeared previously in the past week.

Some more progressive voices on Twitter noted that Tapper was presenting a different approach than the sort of “no bullshit allowed” vibe one sees on other shows he hosts, like The Lead or State of the Union. And there may be a whiff of truth to that, but it ignores the very different protocol and set of rules that typically come with a town hall setting.

Tapper, and presumably the entire programming and production staff at CNN connected with the event, made Pence feel welcome, to which he opened up to share some details from his book that were not extracted by the even more friendly environment of Fox News, though in large part that was a result of questions that were more designed to reaffirm narratives that extract newsworthy comments.

This was a pivotal moment for CNN because Licht’s vision for the network is less of the chest-thumping and binary good vs. evil dynamic we saw under the Trump administration and Jeff Zucker (which brought record ratings and revenue) and instead an intelligent, dispassionate place that will fairly treat reasonable partisans from both sides of the spectrum.

Pence’s appearance on CNN, after five years of former President Donald Trump calling the network “Fake News CNN” and the “enemy of the people,” should not be easily dismissed. And the delicate manner in which Tapper treated Pence roughly but fairly, will almost certainly be noted by other Republican officials on Capitol Hill.

Getting reasonable Republicans to appear regularly on CNN is key to Licht’s plan to restore the network’s reputation (however fair or unfair it might be) as being a “safe space” for political beliefs of all stripes.

I made this argument in May in a column when I wrote:

Broadly speaking, Licht’s objectives are two-fold: 1) Restore CNN’s reputation as a news-based, centrist outlet with people across the political spectrum, and 2) restore its appeal to the right and center-right, which have abandoned it entirely.

These aren’t precisely the same thing, considering what MAGA has done to the Republican party, and considering that most of the mainstream press considers Fox News extreme right-wing and, therefore, most Republicans. Further, restoring access to the right (objective 2) may very well undermine CNN’s credibility with the broader set of viewers (objective 1.)

The path forward? 1) Book non-extremist Republican and Democratic officials and 2) Prepare well-informed anchors to push back on false or misleading rhetoric. If anyone is up for pushing this boulder up the mountain, it’s Licht.

And for my Republican friends eager to “pounce” on my previous “reasonable” descriptor, I’m talking primarily about those who have not gone all in on election denialism, which, frankly, is thankfully abating.  But there is a set of Republican officials who appear so frequently on Fox News (Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, and Jim Jordan) that one wonders if they are kept in a kennel in the basement of FNC’s DC studios.

It’s not a coincidence that Tapper led last night’s event. He’s considered a talented and fair journalist among some conservatives who fondly recall his willingness to ask the Obama administration very tough questions when he was at ABC News.

And Tapper made Pence feel welcome enough that despite the former Vice President appearing like a Simpsons’ parody of himself, he relaxed and offered the sort of news-breaking commentary that was not extracted elsewhere.

As Fox News and MSNBC continue to find success in more partisan-based opinion programming, there is an important space in the middle for CNN to exist and hopefully succeed, though the jury is out on whether proper journalism can be commercially viable in today’s landscape.

But getting conservatives to appear on CNN, and be treated with fairness and respect, will ideally restore a dialog that is not just sorely missing in today’s political media ecosystem but one that is crucial to the healthy body politic.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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