Rush; My Theory on Biden’s Town Hall Ratings Win

[mystery-ak]

My Theory on Biden’s Town Hall Ratings Win

Oct 16, 2020



RUSH: So last night, a friend of mine said, “When are we gonna get the overnight ratings on these two appearances, Trump and Biden?”

I said, “We’ll get ’em shortly before noon tomorrow.”

He said, “Good, I can’t wait.”

I said, “Why?

“‘Cause Trump’s gonna blow him away.”

I said, “I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think Trump is, just my instinct here. And I don’t think it’s gonna mean anything.”

“What do you mean?”

It wouldn’t surprise me if Biden has a little bit of a higher number because they’ve seen less of him. Plugs Biden has been hiding away starting at 8:30 every morning for the past two months. Biden’s put a lid on his campaign. Whenever he makes a campaign appearance, it’s with 10 people. He doesn’t take questions from anybody. He doesn’t engage in any standard, normal operation that you would associate with politics.

In fact, what Biden’s doing is the equivalent of running out the clock. Biden is playing the prevent defense. So don’t be surprised if more people watch because they simply haven’t seen the guy and there will be some curiosity.

Trump is a known quantity and then some. Well, we have the early numbers in, and did I call it or did I call it? It’s basically 12 million to 10 million. Twelve million watched Plugs; 10 million watched Trump. Now, these are the early numbers. They’re not the final numbers. These are the early overnights. Overnight ratings for the dueling presidential town halls are in. Biden’s event on ABC drew 12.7 million viewers from 8 to 9 p.m.

On NBC, Trump got 10.4 million, same time slot, including the full 9 o’clock hour for Biden, the ABC event viewership averaged 12.2, which is down a half a million. Biden also beat Trump among adults 18 to 49 with a 2.6 rating to the president’s 1.7. Now, this story is from Mediaite. They say to be clear, the early numbers don’t include PMSNBC, which simulcast the Trump town hall; so he could get a boost from that in the final numbers, which are due sometime this afternoon. I don’t know exactly when, but they’ll be in sometime this afternoon.

Showbiz, Fox website, same numbers, 12.7, 10.3 million. Now, these guys that are reporting these numbers, “Well, that’s it. That’s it. There’s no curiosity for Trump anymore.” They’re looking at this as a harbinger of Trump’s defeat. And they’re free to do that, but I don’t think that’s what this means. I think it just means that nobody has seen Joe Biden. Stop and think about this. Nobody’s seen Biden at one of these.

The last time anybody saw one of these events with Biden was the first debate, which was kind of a fire drill the way it turned out. And that’s the debate where nobody could figure out what Trump was attempting to achieve there. But both candidates were assessed very negatively in terms of their performance in the first debate. So nobody has seen Biden at all. So it’s not a source of panic. Not a source of negativity or concern for me when you look at it that way.

“But, Rush, but, Rush, Trump is so universally popular. Whenever he’s on TV he blows everybody away.” Yeah. I know. That’s the general consensus. But I don’t think you can erase the fact that this is a presidential election, and one of the candidates is invisible and decided to show up last night.