Tonight, Donald Trump returns to his old Fox News stomping grounds on the Sean Hannity Show for a town hall event — the type of event that, in the past, has made for some interesting news. Trump seemed to be always on Fox back while he was President but as of late, has made fewer appearances and changed it up with a similar event on CNN. As you may recall that was a bit of a ratings boon for the former Ted Turner network and reminded people that CNN was actually still on the air. (Trump Is Ratings Gold for CNN as Millions Tune in to Town Hall)

From my colleague Bob Hoge’s post above…

Enter Former President Donald Trump, and BOOM—the ratings go through the roof and CNN beats rivals Fox News and MSNBC for the first time in seemingly ever. The numbers were yuge:

Donald Trump’s town hall boosted CNN’s ratings to their highest in years, bringing in 3.3 million viewers in his 8pm slot last night.

The audience was double that of Fox and MSNBC in the same hour, and makes a mockery of the 473,000 average CNN pulled in in March this year.

In the key demographic of 25-54, the ratings increased to 781,000 – five times the average.

Most if not all of the coverage in the lamestream press was fiercely negative with multiple outlets accusing the former president of lying, bullying moderator Kaitlan Collins, and just being Trump. (I personally thought as many did that Collins interrupted Trump more than he interrupted her. She literally wouldn’t let him finish half his sentences.) The Los Angeles Times, for instance, begrudgingly admitted that the ratings were big, but also had to point out in their headline that there were detractors: “CNN’s Trump town hall nabs 3.3 million viewers amid brutal criticism.”

I’m going to assume that most people now know that Fox News has taken a huge hit in the ratings since getting rid of Tucker (Ouch: Fox News Ratings in Freefall – Down Over 50 Percent Since Tucker’s Departure), so it makes sense that a Trump appearance will do the same for Fox as it did for CNN.

So last month, when it was announced that Hannity would be hosting Trump, I initially rolled my eyes. I’m sure even the most ardent Trump supporter knows why. Hannity throws softballs at people he likes just like any host at MSNBC does with one of their favs. Sean might as well ask Trump what his favorite color or fast food is and leave it there.

However, after thinking about this, and in light of how Trump dealt with Kaitlin Collins in the CNN event, I’m hoping that Sean or one of the audience members will ask some tougher questions — and luckily, I have some suggestions.

The first one is asking why he decided to turn on his former Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany as he did on Truth Social the other day. Trump has faced blowback on that from even his most ardent supporters who are wondering what his thinking was.

Hannity should be the one to ask that question because McEnany is his colleague on the network, and it would be 100 percent appropriate to ask Trump what he was thinking. If Sean does not ask this very simple but basic question that will be a missed opportunity to demonstrate to people that he is not just a Joe Scaborugh wanna-be without the Mika baggage and slightly better hair.

Does he have the cajones to do that?

The other question that Hannity — or hopefully one of the audience members  — should ask Trump has been asked a number of times and he has danced around it a bit. If he is not the nominee after all is said and done for the Grand Old Party in 2024, will he 100 percent throw his support behind whoever is?

The knock on Trump has always been that he is only a team player if the team is Donald Trump. He has been encouraged in this, as he has the most loyal followers and base by far in the GOP. These folks also seem to indicate that they will not support anybody but Donald Trump as the Republican nominee against Joe Biden in 2024, which is baffling.

If he is noncommittal for supporting the eventual nominee it would be nice to know now and give voters a clear and definitive line of who is for putting the country first and correcting the nonsense of the past 40 years and who isn’t.

Just to be clear and consistent, I did not understand how anybody who said they were conservative could vote for Joe Biden in 2020 over Donald Trump. So the same applies to whoever would make the argument that they will not vote for a Republican nominee if it is not Trump against Joe Biden.

That is part of the weird broken thinking that we have today and is really destructive.

So will Sean or anybody in the Fox News town hall audience today be willing to ask one of these two very simple but important questions?

I know that sometimes it is hard to ask questions of those that you truly admire — or maybe even fear — being you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings or get their nose out of joint.

However, with all the problems this country has it’s time to put everybody’s feelings aside and get down to the nitty-gritty of who is actually going to be the most effective on the Republican side to beat whatever Democrat they face and make the best chance for improving the country over the next four years.

Very few people have the opportunity to ask questions of a former president who’s once again running for his old job. So I hope someone in that room tonight has the simple guts to ask two really simple questions and let’s see how the former president responds.

Otherwise, I guess we’ll have to wait for Trump to do something similar like this on MSNBC, ABC, or CBS — because you know somebody will ask harder questions at those events.