CNN’s Chris Wallace Notes Kamala Harris Convention Clobbering Trump’s RNC Ratings: ‘People Are Watching This Convention’
CNN anchor Chris Wallace twisted the knife a little when he noted that former President Donald Trump’s RNC ratings are getting eclipsed by Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Convention.
As the Democratic National Convention (DNC) enters its final day, the convention released a memo boasting about viewership entitled “Night Two of DNC Generates Mammoth TV and Online Audience of 81 Million People.”
It included a notation about the broadcast ratings:
On TV, the second night of the DNC averaged 20.6 million viewers across 12 networks.
This is well above the second night of the RNC, which averaged 14.8 million viewers on its second night – and now for two nights in a row, the DNC has beaten the RNC’s ratings on TV.
On Thursday’s edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, Wallace joined Kasie Hunt to assess the convention, and Wallace noted the huge disparity in viewership:
BLITZER: Beautiful rendition of the National Anthem, Jess Davis, a school teacher. And we’re told, Kasie, she also sang the National Anthem at Governor Walz’s inauguration in Minnesota. So, you know, no matter how many times I hear our National Anthem, I still get goose bumps.
HUNT: I do too. And, you know, the performances that they’ve done for the first night with the choir that sang, they’ve all been very touching, as, you know, candidly the sort of level of performance at this convention as a whole, Wolf, I also think it’s a pretty significant storyline here. I mean, with Jamie’s reporting about Oprah Winfrey, I have to say watching the roll call last night, it was a pretty stark, frankly, contrast with how they did it at the Republican National Convention. It felt like they were having a big party here, and that seems likely to continue tonight.
And I think my question is, how much does that break through in ways that aren’t traditional because that’s something I think the Democrats are really trying to do?
WALLACE: I’ll tell you, one of the ways it plays, it breaks through, is the ratings, and they just came in for the second night of the convention.
BLITZER: The T.V. ratings?
WALLACE: Yes. More than 20 million people watched. And by comparison, 14 million plus watched the Republican Convention on the second night. So, people are watching this convention, even though it’s going late. Barack Obama didn’t come on until after 11:00 in the east. But you talk about the performances at this convention. One of the joys of being here during the day has been that we heard John Legend, who’s going to be performing later tonight. He was doing Prince. Let’s go crazy. You might say, why is he doing Prince? Because Prince was a Minnesota artist, and Tim Walz is the governor of Minnesota. Stevie Wonder, his performance with singers, and, I mean, with dancers, and that’s going to be great. And Maren Morris, the great country music star, was also performing.
I want to go back to Oprah for a minute, though, because, you know, a lot of people may forget the role she played in the 2008 campaign when she came out for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. And that had a tremendous, legitimizing effect that, you know, Oprah, this kind of mainstream figure in America, and as John King said, somebody that millions of Americans invited into their home every afternoon, for her to come out and to endorse Barack Obama and really the campaign with the Obamas in Iowa and the Carolinas and across the country, had an enormous multiplying effect for Barack Obama. And I think it’s a big deal that she’s going to come out tonight and endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.
Watch above via CNN’s The Situation Room.
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