{"id":368993,"date":"2020-10-16T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=368993"},"modified":"2020-10-19T15:58:01","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T19:58:01","slug":"dont-panic-over-town-hall-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2020\/10\/16\/dont-panic-over-town-hall-ratings\/","title":{"rendered":"My Theory on Biden\u2019s Town Hall Ratings Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I said, “We\u2019ll get \u2019em shortly before noon tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

He said, “Good, I can\u2019t wait.”<\/p>\n

I said, “Why?<\/p>\n

“‘Cause Trump\u2019s gonna blow him away.”<\/p>\n

I said, “I don\u2019t think that\u2019s gonna happen.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“What? What are you talking about?”<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t think Trump is, just my instinct here. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s gonna mean anything.”<\/p>\n

“What do you mean?”<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if Biden has a little bit of a higher number because they\u2019ve seen less of him. Plugs Biden has been hiding away starting at 8:30 every morning for the past two months. Biden\u2019s put a lid on his campaign. Whenever he makes a campaign appearance, it\u2019s with 10 people. He doesn\u2019t take questions from anybody. He doesn\u2019t engage in any standard, normal operation that you would associate with politics.<\/p>\n

In fact, what Biden\u2019s doing is the equivalent of running out the clock. Biden is playing the prevent defense. So don\u2019t be surprised if more people watch because they simply haven\u2019t seen the guy and there will be some curiosity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s basically 12 million to 10 million. Twelve million watched Plugs; 10 million watched Trump. Now, these are the early numbers. They\u2019re not the final numbers. These are the early overnights. Overnight ratings for the dueling presidential town halls are in. Biden\u2019s event on ABC drew 12.7 million viewers from 8 to 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

On NBC, Trump got 10.4 million, same time slot, including the full 9 o\u2019clock 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\u2019s 1.7. Now, this story is from Mediaite. They say to be clear, the early numbers don\u2019t 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\u2019t know exactly when, but they\u2019ll be in sometime this afternoon.<\/p>\n

Showbiz, Fox website, same numbers, 12.7, 10.3 million. Now, these guys that are reporting these numbers, “Well, that\u2019s it. That\u2019s it. There\u2019s no curiosity for Trump anymore.” They\u2019re looking at this as a harbinger of Trump\u2019s defeat. And they\u2019re free to do that, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what this means. I think it just means that nobody has seen Joe Biden. Stop and think about this. Nobody\u2019s seen Biden at one of these.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s not a source of panic. Not a source of negativity or concern for me when you look at it that way.<\/p>\n

“But, Rush, but, Rush, Trump is so universally popular. Whenever he\u2019s on TV he blows everybody away.” Yeah. I know. That\u2019s the general consensus. But I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Greetings. Welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday. Great to have you with us, my friends.<\/p>\n

Let me grab the phones real quick. We always try to go to the phones in the first hour of Open Line Friday. Joe in Charleston, South Carolina. You\u2019re up first today. It\u2019s great to have you, sir. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I just wanted to say that I think you\u2019ve got the analysis of last night\u2019s town halls all wrong on the ratings. I think what happened — and I told my lovely wife, Mary, this before they started — that all the conservatives were actually watching Biden interviewed to see whether or not he was asked any questions about Hunter.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, so you think that\u2019s why Biden won the ratings \u2019cause all the conservatives were watching him?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I did. Yeah. And I think they just wanted to see the answers to the Hunter Biden question.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And what were the libs doing?<\/p>\n

CALLER: The libs? They were watching Savannah to see whether she could, you know, ruffle him again.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They were watching Savannah to see if she could destroy Trump?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Exactly.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I think everybody was reversed last night for the most part.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. All right. So my theory was I don\u2019t think you can break it down that the only people watching Biden were conservatives.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Probably took him over the top, though.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, if you want to look at it that way, feel free to. My theory is, just to repeat it, is that Biden hasn\u2019t been seen by very many people, there is more curiosity about him than there is Trump. Trump\u2019s everywhere, every day. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything anybody thinks they\u2019re gonna learn watching Trump. Now, don\u2019t misunderstand. I\u2019m not suggesting that Trump\u2019s become a ratings dryball. Quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ll go with your theory for just a second here that the conservatives tuned in because they wanted to see Stephanopoulos ask Biden about Hunter. It didn\u2019t happen. The subject didn\u2019t come up. So how long do you think they sat in there watching, waiting for it to come up? Joe, you still there?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yep.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. How long do you think they stood in waiting for it to come up?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I would say at least a half hour. At least to see whether any of the town hall people brought it up.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, if Stephanopoulos didn\u2019t bring it up, I guaran-damn-tee you they weren\u2019t gonna let the town hall people — it wasn\u2019t going to come up. Right now, ABC and the rest of the media look at that story as totally illegitimate. It only ran in the New York Post. They\u2019re not gonna give the New York Post any credit for this. They\u2019re gonna see Rudy Giuliani\u2019s name as part of that story, and they\u2019re gonna immediately cast it aside as illegitimate.<\/p>\n

And then they\u2019re gonna say Twitter, Twitter is not even gonna let that story on their network because it\u2019s illegitimate and wrong. So why should we bring it up? It was never gonna come up. I hate to disappoint people with that, but it wasn\u2019t. Now, a couple other things. Thanks, Joe, for the call. He may have a point.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t remember this until I just got an email. I must have had five emails last night shortly after 9 p.m. from people who said they couldn\u2019t find the NBC town hall with Trump. And when I saw five of \u2019em, I said, why are people bothering me with this? What am I gonna do about it? What am I going to do? It\u2019s NBC. If you can\u2019t find NBC, you need to get out of watching TV.<\/p>\n

Well, then there\u2019s this story. It turns out that this was common, that there were people all over the country who were unable to reach their NBC affiliate. In other words, they couldn\u2019t find it. In fact, I gotta tell you, in my own home, I\u2019m sitting there five minutes after 9 o\u2019clock, “Are you getting NBC? I can\u2019t find it on my receiver in here.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, yeah, I got it fine.” Couple minutes went by, there it is, there it is, it came in. It was late. So there are a number of people complaining it turns out that the NBC town hall at the beginning was not where people expected it to be. Some people said that the broadcast sounded garbled, that other NBC stations were running technical difficulties graphics on the screen. So apparently it wasn\u2019t just the five people that I heard from who claimed that they couldn\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n

The way the ratings work, the first 15 minutes of any hour are crucial and if you want to suppress ratings, then eliminate as much of the first 15 minutes of any sweep that you can. And would NBC do this? Would NBC monkey around with their own technical side to make their broadcast unavailable, unfindable, for just a couple of minutes? Would they garble the audio? Would they do something with the video that routes it in a way that it — I think it\u2019s entirely possible.<\/p>\n

\"\"Given the outright, full-fledged desire on the part of the mainstream media to destroy Trump, I wouldn\u2019t put anything past NBC. And I know that NBC despises Trump to boot. And I wouldn\u2019t have thought a thing about this until I remembered last night that I had five emails from people saying they couldn\u2019t find the Trump town hall on NBC. Which I just immediately rejected. Who can\u2019t find NBC? There may be something more to that.<\/p>\n

Then there is this story. This is from Newsweek: “TikTok Users Watched Biden\u2019s Town Hall on Multiple Devices to Try and Beat Trump\u2019s Ratings — TikTok users banded together to try and boost Joe Biden\u2019s town hall ratings over President Donald Trump\u2019s event last night. The presidential candidates were due to debate,” blah, blah, blah. What happened here is that some guy on YouTube named Hank Green suggested to his viewers that they watch Biden\u2019s town hall event on multiple devices at the same time to boost Biden\u2019s ratings over Trump.<\/p>\n

“Hundreds of TikTok users dueted Green\u2019s sound with videos of them watching Biden on their TVs, laptops, and phones. Another tactic that TikTok users implemented to try to boost Biden\u2019s ratings involved opening up YouTube using multiple Google accounts in multiple tabs.”<\/p>\n

Now, you realize TikTok is the ChiComs, right? TikTok is a ChiCom firm that Trump is attempting to ban because it is basically the communist Chinese government with deep ties to every device using TikTok. So there could be any number of chicanerous reasons to explain the ratings disparity. We\u2019d have to look into all of them.<\/p>\n

But look. I wouldn\u2019t be a bit surprised to find out that games were played like this in order to game the system, in order to make Trump look bad, in order to create the news today that two million more people watched Biden than watched Trump.<\/p>\n

\n

President Trump, you\u2019re welcome back anytime for the Largest Radio Town Hall. I will moderate! @realDonaldTrump<\/a><\/p>\n

— Rush H. Limbaugh (@RealRLimbaugh) October 16, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n