Biden's town hall got more viewers on one network than Trump got on three.
Donald Trump's plan to humiliate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by holding a competing town hall failed spectacularly, with Biden's town hall beating Trump's in the ratings, CNN's Brian Stelter reported.
Biden's event on ABC drew 13.9 million viewers, while Trump's town hall — which aired on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC — drew a combined 13 million viewers, Stelter reported. That means Biden got more viewers on one news network than Trump received on three.
The news comes as Trump's campaign boasted that Trump would get higher ratings than Biden.
"We're gonna have a much bigger audience than Joe," Trump spokesperson Jason Miller, who has a history of adultery and failing to pay child support, told CNN ahead of the town halls.
The news is likely to enrage Trump, who is obsessed with television ratings.
Losing the ratings race is not the only problem Trump had with the town halls — which took place in lieu of a sanctioned presidential debate. The official debate was canceled after Trump was diagnosed with coronavirus and refused to hold the debate virtually.
Trump's town hall performance may not have been helpful to him as far as the viewers who did watch. A focus group with GOP pollster Frank Luntz found that those who watched Trump were turned off by his appearance, in which he refused to condemn QAnon and called his $400 million in debt "a peanut."
"My group of undecided voters say that the more Trump speaks, the worse he looks," Luntz tweeted after the town halls wrapped up.
This is not the first time this cycle that Trump has lost the ratings war.
Earlier this year, the Democratic National Convention drew millions more viewers than the Republican National Convention.
Trump lashed out at the media at the time for accurately reporting that the Democratic convention had more viewers, falsely claiming that "the Fake News doesn't want to report" that Republicans got higher viewership.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
