Tonight, for about 90 minutes, CNN may be the most-watched news channel in America—a rare and probably fleeting distinction it has not enjoyed since January 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was under attack, Jeff Zucker was dictating the coverage, and David Zaslav had yet to initiate the Discovery-WarnerMedia tie-up that would catalyze the network’s pivot to a more centrist, John Malone-approved, G.O.P.-friendly posture. CNN, which has endured some of the worst ratings in its history under Zaz’s hand-picked C.E.O., Chris Licht, is now poised for a brief taste of the same power and influence that it enjoyed in the old days. And it will achieve that massive audience, of course, via the very same mechanism that fueled the Zucker years: Donald Trump.