Alisyn Camerota is a CNN anchor and co-host of CNN's morning show, "New Day." She is a member of the national advisory council of the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit that gives students in grades 6-12 the skills to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) In May of 2016, I went to Trump Tower to meet with then-candidate Donald Trump. The meeting came about after he'd canceled a couple of appearances on "New Day" and I got the impression he was avoiding doing interviews with me. I called his office hoping his longtime personal assistant could shed some light on whether Mr. Trump was upset about something. She told me to give her a week or so to try to figure it out. She called back 20 minutes later. "Mr. Trump would like to see you tomorrow. How's 3 p.m.?"

Alisyn Camerota

A few years earlier I'd been regularly interviewing Donald Trump. Back then, I was the host of a morning show on FOX News Channel and Donald Trump was a real estate mogul and reality TV star. FOX producers had given Trump a standing slot every week to come on "FOX & Friends" and broadcast his opinion, usually on how politicians were screwing things up. At the time, Trump claimed to be toying with a presidential run, though few of us thought he'd really do it.

Because Donald Trump wasn't a politician, he seemed unburdened by party messaging, "political correctness" or talking points. He appeared unwedded to any particular ideology, as he borrowed positions from across the political spectrum, cobbling together a platform that was neither Republican nor Democratic, but rather Trumpian.

His segments always drew high ratings, often the highest of the morning. A circular pattern took hold: the producers would book Trump, the ratings would spike, they'd book Trump again. These were not hard-hitting interviews. Because Trump was not a politician -- and because my then-boss Roger Ailes had little interest in holding any Republican's feet to the fire -- we treated Trump as a pundit, letting him pontificate without fact-checking his claims. I tried to challenge his positions, particularly his extreme birther statements, but my challenges didn't stop him from continuing to make outrageous claims, or stop the producers from continuing to book him.

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By May of 2016, everything was different. By then, I was the anchor of CNN's morning news program, "New Day," and Donald Trump was a presidential candidate. At CNN, we didn't let candidates' claims go unchecked. So, for example, in an interview with me, when Trump claimed he had never expressed disapproval about the United States going into Afghanistan, I had to correct him. He had called the US invasion into Afghanistan a mistake. On the air, I read his own words to him, verbatim. He claimed, despite my having the transcript, that he'd never said it.

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