Looks like Donald Trump lost the town hall ratings battle to Joe Biden

| 1:20 pm EDT October 16, 2020
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It’s still unclear why NBC was willing to face such huge backlash from the public just to sidle up with Donald Trump for an illegitimate “dueling” town hall event last night, only to then alienate Trump by hitting him with hard questions that he didn’t like. If this was all just to set up a big ratings night, it appears even that didn’t work out as planned.

The initial numbers suggest that a couple million more people watched Joe Biden’s town hall on ABC than watched Donald Trump’s town hall on NBC, according to a new report from Variety. These numbers could shift because the Trump town hall was also broadcast on MSNBC and other NBC properties. But we’d imagine most MSNBC viewers flipped over and watched Biden instead.

Meanwhile Newsweek says that Biden’s town hall got about three times as many YouTube viewers as Trump’s town hall did.

Of course no matter what the finalized numbers end up being, Donald Trump will simply lie and claim he won the ratings battle. But that won’t change the fact that even though Trump is the “entertainment industry” guy, he still couldn’t compete with Joe Biden. Americans are hungry for real leadership right now, not reality show politics.