‘Serious Breach of Journalistic Ethics!’ CNN Anchors Slam Fox News Over Trump Getting Town Hall Questions In Advance

CNN anchors Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan slammed Fox News over reports President-elect Donald Trump was given town hall questions in advance — John Berman later mocked the network and Trump as well.

Hadas Gold of CNN was first to report on the bombshell revelation based on excerpts from a new book by Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, entitled Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.

On Wednesday’s edition of CNN News Central, Sidner slammed Fox while teasing the story, and Bolduan also ripped them as she introduced Gold.

As the segment wrapped up, Berman couldn’t resist mocking the situation by demanding his colleagues provide him with questions in advance any time they needed to ask him something:

SARA SIDNER: Excerpt from a new book that details how Donald Trump got the questions for a Fox News town hall in advance, a major breach of ethics.

…

KATE BOLDUAN: First on CNN, a new book claiming President elect Donald Trump and his team were given questions in advance of his Fox News town hall in Iowa last January– sent to him by someone inside Fox News.

To be clear, handing over questions ahead of any interview, especially a town hall, is a serious breach of journalistic ethics.

The allegation is revealed in the upcoming book titled “Revenge” The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power” by Alex Isenstadt of Politico.

And CNN’s Hadas Gold got these exclusive excerpts ahead of the book’s release. She’s here with us now to walk us through this. What else have you learned?

HADAS GOLD: Yeah, there’s actually two juicy nuggets that we got as part of these exclusive experts. But the most stunning of them is what we learned about this town hall. The town hall took place in January 2024. President elect Donald Trump was set to sit down with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. And the book says that his advisers were actually a little bit nervous about this because those two anchors are known to be a bit more of tough questioners to the president-elect, but he wanted to do it.

But then they hit the jackpot just about 30 minutes before they were set to go on stage. This book says that the team managed to get their hands on the questions. I’m going to read to you part of this excerpt.

They say “About 30 minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy expletive, the team thought, they were images of all the questions Trump will be asked and the planned follow ups down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This is like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started.”.

Then they say that the team then had some time to workshop their answers about things like political retribution and Trump ended up having, like was pretty cool about it in the town hall.

Now, we, of course, asked Fox News about this, and they say that “While we do not have any evidence of this occurring and Alex Isenstadt has conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking, we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should they prove to be a breach within the network.”.

Alex Isenstadt told me he has multiple sources on this. He stands by his reporting. And when I went to the Trump campaign to ask them for their comment, they didn’t directly address this or really deny it. They say “President Trump was the most successfull and transparent candidate in American history.

KATE BOLDUAN: Great reporting for us. Thank you very, very much.

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JOHN BERMAN: I do require any time you have anything to ask me that both of you send your questions in advance (LAUGHS) so I know so I can prepare for.

SARA SIDNER: And we both refuse!

KATE BOLDUAN: We both did. And that has nothing to do with journalistic ethics.

SARA SIDNER: It’s our our little scoop nugget. Now, we’re going to we’re going to move on.

A spokesperson for Fox responded to the allegations with the following statement:

While we do not have any evidence of this occurring, and Alex Isenstadt has conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking, we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network.

Notably, CNN contributor Donna Brazile was dropped from the network after it was revealed she leaked debate questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.

Watch above via CNN News Central.