Back in 2023, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins spent the entirety of a televised town hall contradicting and interrupting her guest, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. By contrast, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders joined Collins for a town hall on Wednesday night (October 15), she repeatedly permitted her guests to launch into talking point-laden stump speeches with no pushback.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
- Analysts found Collins interrupted Trump 12.5 times more than Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.
- On average, Collins interrupted or attempted to interrupt Trump once every 22 seconds.
- In total, Democrats were permitted roughly 50% more time to speak.
MRC analysts examined the entirety of both CNN town halls hosted by Collins: one featuring Trump on May 10, 2023, and one featuring Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders on October 15, 2025. In 2023, Collins interrupted Trump 113 times — 12.5 times more than she interrupted either liberal guest. The combined speaking time of both Democrat guests in 2025 totaled exactly 60 minutes — almost 50 percent more than Trump’s 41 minutes two years earlier.
Across Trump’s 41 minutes, the 113 interruptions average out to 2.75 interruptions per minute, or one every 22 seconds. For the Democrats, Collins’s nine interjections during their full hour of speaking time means they were interrupted only 0.15 times per minute, or once every 6.6 minutes.
Trump often continued speaking despite an interjection by Collins, resulting in an average response duration of 37 seconds during his town hall. Democrats, meanwhile, enjoyed an average response duration of 67 seconds at their event.
The final portion of the October 15 town hall perfectly highlighted Collins’s deference to her Democrat guests. When asked by an audience member about national unity, Ocasio-Cortez responded with a three-minute stump speech in which she claimed Senator Sanders had a “tremendous bipartisan record,” touted her work regulating sexually explicit AI, and complained that labeling others as “un-American” was un-American. This was immediately followed by a two-minute response by Sanders, which included an enthusiastic plug for the Democrats’ upcoming “no kings day” rally.
These combined responses amounted to five minutes and 17 seconds of uninterrupted prognosticating. That’s more than one fifth of the total amount of speaking time allotted to Trump back in 2023.
