Former President Donald Trump has responded after the ratings came in for his town hall event on CNN earlier this week.

The event took place on Wednesday and was hosted live at a venue in New Hampshire, where the first GOP primary will be held early next year. Trump, so far, is the dominant frontrunner in the Republican field of declared and undeclared candidates.

Liberals and left-wing Democrats were angry at CNN for giving Trump air time, but by any measure, it was a ratings hit for the network, which has regularly placed third behind Fox News and MSNBC, though the latter has scored higher in prime time after Fox dismissed ratings king Tucker Carlson last month.

According to The Hill, the town hall drew in more than 3 million viewers, which was more than three times the normal viewership for the prime-time slot.

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Trump, on the other hand, praised CNN on his Truth Social platform, writing: “People are criticizing CNN for giving me a Forum to tell the TRUTH. I believe it was a very smart thing that they did, with Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time. It was by far the biggest Show of the night, the week, and the month!”

“The Radical Left screamed, ‘Take it down, take it down,’ during the Show, because they saw that I was making so many important points on the Border, Energy Independence, the Afghanistan Catastrophe, Inflation, the Economy, Russia/Ukraine, and so much more. Many minds were changed on Wednesday night by listening to Common Sense, and sheer ‘Brilliance,’” Trump noted in a follow-up post.

However, according to The Hill, a lot of the network’s talent expressed anger and resentment at CEO Chris Licht’s decision to feature Trump.

CNN faced both political and media controversy as Trump disregarded moderator Kaitlan Collins’s attempts to fact-check a series of statements he made during the event while the crowd present at the town hall strongly expressed their support for the Republican candidate, further angering insiders.

“It was a total debacle, and I’ve never been more ashamed to work at CNN,” one prominent on-air talent at the network told The Hill on Thursday. “I don’t think anybody came out looking good. This is entirely a corporate and management failure. They should have anticipated how out of control Trump would be … to think he was going to act more presidential in that kind of setting is just naivety on a galactic scale.”

Democratic lawmakers were angry, too.

“There is simply no way CNN can feign ignorance about the fact that they set up a sexual assault victim to be targeted and attacked on national television a day after the verdict. People were sounding the alarm about this exact scenario. They let it happen anyway without a plan,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted.

This, the choice to platform election disinformation, lies about January 6th, totally unchecked and reckless claims about abortion… they need to take ownership of what just happened.

This cannot be normalized. It’s dangerous.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 11, 2023

“This, the choice to platform election disinformation, lies about January 6th, totally unchecked and reckless claims about abortion… they need to take ownership of what just happened. This cannot be normalized. It’s dangerous,” she said.

Joy Behar, one of the controversial co-hosts of ABC’s “The View,” wrote, “The Cnn thing is a joke. The audience is stacked with his cult. Kaitlin is good, but it’s impossible to deal with this pathological liar.

“CNN should be embarrassed by this audience. They are enthralled with him and that emboldens him. It’s like encouraging a toddler to behave badly. #Cult,” she said. “This is more like one of his rallies where the sycophants bow down to their cult leader.”