CNN host Erin Burnett is set to moderate a town hall with progressive Texas Senate candidate James Talarico next month as her network continues to tussle with the Trump administration over their biased, Democrat-aligned coverage of the White House.
A Monday morning press release announced that CNN is partnering with Jubilee Media to host the town hall live from Texas on Wednesday, October 14, with Talarico taking questions from Burnett as well as a live audience of Texas voters.
“The audience will be made up of Democrats, Republicans, and Independent voters,” CNN stated.
While CNN is primarily known as left-wing establishment media, Jubilee’s YouTube empire has become popular among young people from across the political spectrum for hosting debates on a wide range of subjects and points of view.
A town hall invitation has also been extended to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican running against Talarico for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) seat after beating the incumbent in the GOP primary earlier this year.
Burnett, who also moderated the Democrat Party’s 2020 primary debate on CNN and extensively interviewed Democrat candidates during the 2024 election season, has recently thrown jabs at President Donald Trump for his ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool.
Speaking on the ban of the aforementioned outlets for allegedly reporting “fake news,” the host argued on last Wednesday’s episode of CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” that “for Trump, fiction and lies refers to any story that he doesn’t like.”
Going on to compare his move to something out of communist China, Burnett claimed that “this is a ban that is more likely to be seen in Beijing than Washington.”
“China’s Xi Jinping does have absolute control over the media. He has the power to silence dissenting voices,” the host continued. “And that’s exactly what Trump is doing on the same day that he meets with Xi, where he is rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese president, something that hasn’t been done on U.S. soil. We haven’t been here in nearly a decade.”
Despite this stance, Burnett has previously cast shade on the concept of free speech in the media when it comes to Trump himself. When Trump was banned on Twitter (now X) in January 2021, Burnett failed to push back against the proposition that platforms should remove him due to the alleged danger posed by his remarks.
When former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was suspended from Twitter for her claims about COVID, Burnett asked guest Mike Shields, “You don’t think Twitter should stop her from using their platform to spread her message, even if it is misleading?”
Shields argued, “Look, this is America. We have free speech. Even people saying dumb things are allowed in our country. Twitter is a platform that looks biased. It looks like it only does this sort of thing to conservatives.”
A few days after the bar on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, a federal judge ruled that the three outlets must be “immediately” reinstated.
U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly issued his directive in a lawsuit the news organizations filed jointly to overturn the president’s action, though the White House still dropped CNN from traveling with Trump on Air Force One this past Saturday.
Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the move on Sunday’s episode of “This Week” on ABC, pointing out that the White House “routinely decides who can go on Air Force One.”
“This wasn’t a one-time denial of CNN,” Blanche stated. “There’s all kinds of times when certain reporters are not flying or are flying.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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