Dan Gainor: Trump?s NBC town hall turns into debate with moderator ? and Trump wins

“More than 100 top showrunners, producers and stars have sent a petition to Comcast and NBCUniversal executives protesting the timing of tonight's town hall with President Donald Trump,” The Hollywood Reporter reported.Politico reported: “The internal conflict extends to the highest levels of NBCUniversal, where MSNBC head Phil Griffin strongly disagreed with NBC News President Noah Oppenheim’s decision to unilaterally move forward with the town hall,” which was held at the same time ABC aired a town hall scheduled earlier with former Vice President Biden.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTERTrump himself had predicted NBC would be insanely biased, tweeting: “I will be doing a major Fake @NBCNews Town Hall Forum, live tonight from Miami, at 8:00 P.M. They asked me to do it in place of the Rigged Steve Scully (he is now suspended from @cspan for lying) Debate. I’m doing this town hall with Concast, C-O-N, right, con, because it’s a con job,” Trump said.But Trump more than held his own against the activist “moderator.” He repeatedly pointed out that the economy is doing well, adding at the end that “our economy is strong.”“And next year is going to be better than ever before,” the president concluded, finally getting the last word in over Guthrie’s interruptions.The town hall — which aired on MSNBC and CNBC as well as NBC — was so contentious that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow seemed to apologize that it ran on her news channel.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPMaddow called the town hall a “strange replacement” for the second presidential debate. We did not produce that event." After the NBC town hall, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh accurately summed up what had occurred in a statement: “Even though the commission canceled the in-person debate that could have happened tonight, one occurred anyway, and President Trump soundly defeated NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in her role as debate opponent and Joe Biden surrogate.