The Independent has the bad news for the crowd-size-obsessed Donald Trump: Despite coverage across 12 television networks, Monday night’s RNC convention drew only 18.1 million viewers. That’s five million fewer than the 23 million in 2016. That’s despite the fact that Trump had announced he’d reveal his vice presidential pick that day.
Lawrence O’Donnell rubbed it in Tuesday night. He said the ratings show that Republicans will not be adding voters via the RNC. He said there was a total of 19 million people watching but only six million at Fox. “That‘s less than 10% of ardent Trump voters actually decided ‘I'm going to watch this thing last night,’” he said. “I’ve written episodes of drama series that have gotten a bigger rating,” he added. He was referring to his stint as a writer and producer of The West Wing.
“I used to get 20 million people routinely on Wednesday nights at 9 PM,” O’Donnell continued. “This is a very low-rated convention for Donald Trump and I think it's one of the reasons why he went there. And I think even if he hadn’t been attacked, there's a possibility he would've gone to try to pump up his ratings. He did everything he could to pump up Monday night ratings. They’re lower than the Monday night ratings of his 2016 convention."
May it be an omen for Trump’s voter turnout as well.
