The first 25 minutes of the CNN town hall on Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump were devoid of questions about the issues. Instead, Trump was peppered with questions about his 2020 election fraud claims, January 6, and writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing Trump of rape.

Trump rejected pushback to his claims of a “rigged” election in 2020. When CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, who is moderating the event, noted that GOP officials have rejected allegations of election fraud, Trump shot back, saying they were “afraid to take on the issue.”

When asked if he would suspend “polarizing” talk of election fraud on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump indicated he would unless he sees evidence of malfeasance, in which case Trump said he would have an “obligation” to call it out.

“We should have voter ID, we should have one-day elections, we should [have] paper ballots instead of these mail-in votes,” Trump said.

Trump defended his conduct in the events surrounding the U.S. Capitol breach and said he would likely pardon a large number of January 6 defendants.

He was asked about the defamation trial in which a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, but not liable for rape. Trump called Carroll a “whack job” and insisted he did not know her.

Trump also stood by his comments in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

The event is taking place at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, an early-voting state. CNN said Trump will face questions from Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in New Hampshire’s GOP presidential primary.

After years of calling CNN “fake news,” Trump explained in a Truth Social post on Tuesday why he agreed to make his first appearance on the cable news network since the 2016 campaign, saying that CNN “me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!!”

The network has faced calls for a boycott, as evidenced by the spread of the #BoycottCNN on Twitter, over its decision to host Trump for a town hall.

A number of people have criticized CNN, including one of its own analysts, former D.C. Metro Police officer Michael Fanone, who wrote an op-ed for Rolling Stone condemning the network for hosting the “guy who tried to get me killed” — a reference to January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

A statement from CNN explained why the network set up a town hall with Trump.

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“CNN has a longstanding tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates for Town Halls and political events as a critical component of the network’s robust campaign coverage,” the network said. “This event with former President Trump will be the first of many for CNN in the coming months as CNN correspondents travel across the country to hear directly from voters in the runup to the 2024 presidential election.”

Donald Trump, the nation’s 45th president, is seeking a second term in office as President Joe Biden faces low poll numbers. Ahead of what may be a 2020 rematch, Trump is facing a flurry of legal challenges, including a case in Manhattan in which he became the first former U.S. president to be criminally charged. Trump has broadly denied any wrongdoing.

Polls examining the 2024 election generally show Trump with a significant lead over the rest of the GOP primary field. The next closest Republican is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced a campaign, but reportedly is moving in that direction.

“The Expendables” star Dolph Lundgren didn’t beat around the bush when he said he’s “lucky to be alive” after revealing how he almost died during his secret 8-year battle with cancer.

During the 65-year-old Swedish actor’s appearance on “In Depth with Graham Bensinger,” he opened up about the “serious” health diagnosis he got in 2015 when doctors in Los Angeles “found a tumor” in his kidney and took it out, the New York Post reported.

“But then they did a biopsy — and it was cancerous,” Lundgren told the host. “Then I did scans every six months, then you do it every year, then it was fine for five years.”

Dolph Lundgren reveals ‘serious’ 8-year cancer battle https://t.co/0J3SVGnouQ pic.twitter.com/Hbl6Je6tZy

— New York Post (@nypost) May 10, 2023

In 2020, he was experiencing what he thought was acid reflux, but it turned out that the cancer was back and had spread. Lundgren was told he had six tumors in his kidneys and liver and that he only had “two to three years” left to live.

“At that point, it started to hit me that this is kind of something serious,” the “Rocky IV” actor said.

After a scan to prepare for surgery, Dolph said “the surgeon called me and said, ‘No, it’s grown now. It’s too big. We can’t take it out.’ It’s like the size of like a small lemon.”

“The doctor over there [Sweden] wasn’t really sharing information with us, so we didn’t really know, didn’t know what was going on,” the actor said. “I think now, thinking back, they probably thought, ‘Oh, I’m a lost case.’”

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“I thought it was it for sure,” he added, before getting emotional. “You kind of look at your life and go ‘I’ve had a frickin’ great life.’ I’ve lived like five lifetimes in one. So it wasn’t like I was bitter about it. It was just like, you know, feel sorry for my kids and my fiancée and people around you.”

However, not ready to give up all hope, he decided to seek a second opinion. The second opinion would come from Dr. Alexandra Drakaki, who noticed something unusual about the tumor and prescribed medication that had success with shrinking mutations in tumors, which is exactly what happened. Lundgren said the tumor had shrunk by 90% by the end of 2022.

“I used to say his cancer is melting away,” Drakaki laughed. “There are certain parts of his body that the cancer is responding really well. There’s some lesions that we cannot see them anymore. So that is above expectations.”

And now the Hollywood star said he “appreciates life a lot more” and feels “lucky to be alive,” Page Six noted.

Lundgren is engaged to fiancée Emma Krokdal, 25. He also shares two children from a previous marriage.