I can see you are not familiar with their backgrounds, or public statements.
Warner Brothers and Discovery merged, Discovery management is now in charge of the overall company. New board guy (Malone, who controlled Discovery prior to the merger) has praised Fox, said Fox News is necessary for the country and stated that he wants CNN to be more like Fox News. He has publicly claimed he thinks Brett Baier is "reliably centrist". That's the same Brett Baier who was recently caught admitting to Tucker Carlson that he (Baier) was pressuring Fox to slow, or stop, Fox's accurate reporting on the election results. When Malone says CNN should be "centrist", he means Brett Baier.
The new WBD CEO has worked for Malone since 2006, dumbing down and ruining the Discovery channel and TLC into the reality show hellscapes they have become.
https://www.vox.com/2022/8/26/23322761/cnn-john-malone-david-zaslav-chris-licht-brian-stelter-fox-peter-kafka-colum
Malone also compares himself with Murdoch favorably, though he says Murdoch differs from him by favoring a "strong military", implying that Malone is a libertarian who does not believe in a "strong military".
More reporting from last September on it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3634717-changes-spark-chatter-of-cnn-is-shift-from-left-to-right/
It's obvious this townhall was always intended to be a right wing/Trump puff piece, look at the audience they selected. CNN is attempting to cater to Trump, since he is currently pissed at Fox.
CNN is going to continue to tilt farther and farther right. Tapper and Cooper will get on board, or they'll be replaced.