Trump's Town Hall Audience Gives Revealing Verdict on His Performance

A group of people who were in the audience for Donald Trump's CNN town hall on Wednesday night said the former president's performance had done nothing to change their views of him.

The town hall in New Hampshire marked Trump's return to the network for the first time since 2016 as he campaigns to return to the White House.

It came a day after a jury in New York found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll almost 30 years ago and defaming her when she spoke about it, awarding her $5 million in damages. Trump has denied Carroll's allegations and said he did not know her, but did not attend the trial or testify. Instead, jurors were shown video from a pretrial deposition.

During the town hall, the audience of Republican and unaffiliated voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered and laughed when Trump insulted Carroll, including when he called her "a wack job," and when he called moderator Kaitlan Collins "a nasty person."

Trump also repeated his unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, downplayed the violence on January 6, 2021 and defended comments he made in an infamous Access Hollywood video, where he bragged about women letting him grab their genitals without permission because he was a star.

"I can't take that back because it happens to be true," he said.

Afterwards, eight audience members—the majority of them Trump supporters—delivered their verdict on his performance. All eight told CNN that their opinion of him remained unchanged.

Asked to give a show of hands, none said they thought Trump looked better or worse after the town hall.

A clip of the moment was shared on Twitter, where it quickly went viral, amassing more than 250,000 views in a matter of hours.

Some suggested the behavior of Trump supporters was "cult like."

"No one think he looks worse? Are we living in a satire?" one Twitter user wrote.

However, others said they believe most people's opinions of Trump are set, whether positive or negative.

Eight people "clearly don't reflect the minds of 300+ million people but this is close to the truth imo," one Twitter user wrote. "No one is changing their mind on trump tonight bc of the cnn interview. it's all fake outrage. voters have rejected him 3x since 2016. they will reject him again."

Another wrote: "He's arguably one of the most known politicians ever. For five+ years he was on TV [non-stop]. I struggle to imagine there is a statistically significant amount of people that don't already have a baked opinion of the man. At least that's not changing after 60 minutes."

Newsweek has contacted Trump's office for comment via email.