An audience member at Sen. Cory Booker's (D., N.J.) black caucus town hall in Iowa took a shot at CNN's town hall format on Tuesday night, saying it was "all fake."
Near the end of Booker's question and answer session, a black man wearing Chicago Bulls attire prefaced his question with criticism of CNN's town hall format.
"If CNN is in this house, you need to take a lesson from her. This is what you call a real town hall meeting," the guy said. "All that mess that CNN be doing is all fake. They already got people out in the audience already picked who they want to ask a question. It ain't going down like that here, so CNN need to take a lesson of this."
"All that signing in and all that old mess that y'all got to do and you got to have a ticket and all, show your new phone that you--hey, I'm here and able to come in and all that old mess," the guy continued.
Booker laughed at his mockery of CNN and then asked him to go ahead and ask his question. The guy referred to President Donald Trump as the "so-called president" and went on to criticize him for "lying." Booker, who is running for president, took several questions from Iowa voters in the audience and stayed around afterwards to take selfies and answer more questions.
CNN has already held numerous town halls for Democratic candidates. CNN has scheduled five town halls on Monday, April 22 in New Hampshire. The candidates will be Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
Fox News held a town hall for Sanders earlier this week and it was the highest rated 2020 candidate forum, surpassing the town halls hosted by CNN and MSNBC.