Donald Trump continues his verbal assault on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

The former president said Sunday she was “not exactly Barbara Walters” and blamed her poor performance during last week’s town hall on the firestorm of criticism that the network has endured.

“It’s really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall,” he wrote on Truth Social. “In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms. Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close. That’s when the trouble from the Radical Left started.”

Trump also took aim at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Neurotic little AOC with the bad looking boyfriend, went crazy,” he said. “‘He owns CNN, he’s in their head,’ they screamed. CNN, take the GREAT RATINGS!”

CNN faces backlash over its town hall, an event that swiftly turned chaotic.

The town hall was the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN defended its decision to hold it as a chance to put Trump in front of a wider audience, outside of the conservative media bubble he has largely kept to since early in his presidency.

Critics said the event, which was staged in front of Republicans and unaffiliated voters who were expected to vote in the GOP primary, instead turned into a Trump campaign rally and allowed him to repeat longstanding falsehoods while dodging difficult questions

Tom Jones, a senior writer at the media research institute Poynter, said the atmosphere put CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, in an almost impossible position as she tried to elicit straightforward answers from Trump and fact-check his comments about the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by his supporters and the 2020 election, which he still falsely insists he won.

The event did widen CNN’s audience, at least for a night. Nielson said the town hall averaged 3.3 million viewers, compared to the 707,000 who tuned in to CNN during the same time slot a night earlier.

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Music App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.