Key things to know about the CNN presidential town hall in New Hampshire tonight
From CNN's Jeremy Herb
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, will take questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters in a CNN town hall Wednesday as a myriad of legal issues loom over his 2024 White House bid.
The town hall will be moderated by "CNN This Morning" anchor Kaitlan Collins at Saint Anselm College and is Trump's first appearance on the network since 2016.
Trump is set to face voters as he deals with unprecedented legal clouds hanging over him and as he seeks to become only the second commander-in-chief, ever, elected to two non-consecutive terms.
The town hall comes just a day after a Manhattan federal jury found the former president sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996 and awarded her $5 million for battery and defamation.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and called the verdict in the civil case a "total disgrace."
Last month in New York, he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC — where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations — and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.
Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts.
That's a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president "are politically motivated" and that "no other candidate is like him, we must support him."
While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary, and Trump's biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid — Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling.
In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.
Trump's participation in the town hall is indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN's Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday.
Trump will enter tonight's town hall with a polling advantage
From CNN's Harry Enten
Former President Donald Trump enters Wednesday’s CNN town hall as both the prohibitive GOP frontrunner for the 2024 nomination and a man just found liable in a civil case for sexually abusing and defaming former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.
While we cannot yet know what effect that verdict will have on the race for the Republican nomination, Trump’s large polling advantage was built with this civil trial in the news and after being indicted earlier this spring in a separate criminal case related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. (Trump has denied all wrongdoing.)
The leads Trump has in surveys of Republican voters and in endorsements from elected officials at this stage are some of the strongest for a nonincumbent in the modern presidential primary era.
Trump is polling, on average, north of 50% in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. His nearest potential challenger – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to launch a campaign – is earning a little north of 20% of the Republican primary vote on average. No other potential Republican candidate is in double digits.
There are very few candidates, of either party, in nonincumbent races who were near or north of 50% in the national primary polls this early on. Those included Republicans Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000, and Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. All of those candidates won their party’s nominations, and none of those races were particularly close.
Interestingly, all the legal controversies involving Trump have not hurt him in the polls. At the beginning of the year, Trump was earning a little more than 40% of the vote, on average, and was only about 10 points ahead of DeSantis. Trump’s lead is now triple that at closer to 30 points, on average.
You can read more about the polls here.
