CNN's Jake Tapper hosted a town hall with former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday evening with a live audience, and generated multiple newsworthy moments. 

Pence blasted the legal team who advised former President Donald Trump in the wake of the 2020 election, saying they "should have never been let through the gate," and shared conversations they had after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in which he told Trump he would "never stop praying" for him and advised Trump to "turn to Jesus."

The questions were mostly generated by the audience, but Tapper asked a few of his own, including pressing the former veep about his refusal to testify before the Jan. 6 committee. The CNN anchor also called out Pence's "revisionism" on Thursday's episode of CNN This Morning.

The town hall also dovetailed well into the stated strategic goals of CNN's new head Chris Licht, who wants the network to avoid partisan "extremes" and avoid falling for the "noise" generated by former President Donald Trump. 

As Mediaite's Colby Hall noted, Tapper fact-checked Pence but still treated him with "fairness and respect," helping bolster Licht's efforts to make "reasonable Republicans" feel welcome on CNN. Smart move.

Fox News host Charles Payne dismissed recent criticism of former President Donald Trump from conservatives who are angry about the GOP’s underwhelming performance in the midterms.

While filling in on Wednesday’s edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Payne argued that criticism is coming from those who were already not fans of the country’s 45th president.

“A lot of the Republicans that are coming out against Trump never liked Trump,” said Payne. “Some folks were pushed out [out of the party], some people that never got along with him well.”

That's just plain false. A growing list of Republican officials and conservative commentators have expressed reservations about a third Trump campaign, and a significant number of them were vocal supporters of the former president. Some of these people are Payne's colleagues at Fox. 

More importantly, the issues being voiced by these conservatives are not centered on personality conflicts or "not liking" Trump, but practical concerns that his brand has faded with voters and he is a drag on the GOP's ability to win elections. Payne was unfair to be so dismissive.