It's the inauguration numbers redux

Actual Nielsen numbers:

Good summary of last week

And there it is

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus, the sleaze

First the naturalized citizens who didn't know they were going to be part of the Republican National Convention.  Now this:

[Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump associate who oversees federal housing programs in New York,] told a leader of a tenants’ group at the New York City Housing Authority, the nation’s largest, that she was interested in speaking with residents about conditions in the authority’s buildings, which have long been in poor repair.

Four tenants soon assembled in front of a video camera and were interviewed for more than four hours by Ms. Patton herself. They were never told that their interviews would be edited into a two-minute video clip that would air on Thursday night at the Republican National Convention and be used to bash Mayor Bill de Blasio, three of the tenants said in interviews on Friday.

[...]

Throughout the convention, Mr. Trump has shattered the traditional boundaries between government and politics, and the video was aired on a night when the campaign took over the South Lawn of the White House.

[...]

Three of the four tenants in the public housing video were interviewed on Friday by The New York Times. All three said they opposed President Trump and were misled about the purpose of the video.

[...]

Ms. Patton said that she had spoken with all four tenants on Friday and that they were upset with the way The Times was “twisting their words.”

[...]

In a separate interview, Ms. Quiñones said she talked to Ms. Patton on Friday afternoon and was comfortable with how she was being portrayed by The Times. She said she was disappointed that her words had been twisted to make it seem as if she were a Trump supporter.

Ms. Perez and a third tenant, Manny Martinez, said they had not spoken with Ms. Patton on Friday and did not know what she was talking about.

[...]

Ms. Patton is a Trump family loyalist who before the president’s election organized tournaments on his golf courses and planned his son Eric’s wedding. She had little experience in housing policy before her appointment to HUD.

[...]

The public housing clip was the second instance of the Trump campaign’s misleading participants in an event involving the federal government that was filmed for the Republican National Convention. On Tuesday, the convention showed a video of five new American citizens being sworn in at a naturalization ceremony by Mr. Trump. Some of the five said they did not know that they were being filmed for a political event.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh my

Earlier this week, The Daily Beast reported that President Trump had one thing on his mind heading into his Republican National Convention.

The president was telling his closest aides that he was determined to beat his rival Joe Biden in the TV ratings. He was requesting daily ratings for the Democratic National Convention and insisted that his RNC spectacle would demolish their “pathetic” numbers, according to a senior administration official.

  The Daily Beast

Sad!

In the end, apparently not even all of the unethical pomp and circumstance of a Trump-branded White House as the backdrop of his big speech Thursday night could draw more viewers than Biden’s solemnly rousing speech to an empty auditorium.

According to initial Nielsen numbers, President Trump’s speech Thursday night drew 14.1 million viewers across the three broadcast networks and three major cable news networks. That is more than three million fewer viewers than the 17.5 million who tuned in to watch Biden’s speech one week earlier.

When those numbers are expanded out across nine broadcast and cable networks, Biden still beat Trump by a fairly wide margin, 23.6 million to 21.6 million.

At 70 minutes, Trump spoke close to three times as long as Joe Biden, whose DNC speech clocked in at 24 and a half minutes. It was the second-longest convention speech in modern American history—after the 75-minute speech Trump delivered at the 2016 RNC.

Well, at least he beat himself.

Biden’s DNC beat Trump’s RNC across the board on all four nights, starting with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech on night one, which drew about 18.7 million viewers compared to 15.8 million for Donald Trump Jr., Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and others on the first night of the RNC. Night two was closer, but headliner Jill Biden still edged out First Lady Melania Trump, 18.6 million to 18 million.

People watched to see if Melania gave Michelle Obama's speech again.

On night three, Vice President Mike Pence not only lost viewers compared to the previous night but also came in far behind the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris. While approximately 15.7 million viewers watched Pence, about 21.5 million viewers tuned in to Harris.

In fact, while the DNC’s ratings generally grew night by night over the course of the four-day convention last week, the RNC’s numbers appear to have stayed flat or even dropped as the week went on.

Sad, sad, sad.

None of this stopped Trump from tweeting Friday morning, “Great Ratings & Reviews Last Night. Thank you!”

Of course not. I expect him to declare victory on election night, too, regardless of the outcome.

UPDATE:

Day 4 - When the circus pulls up stakes but doesn't leave town

The final day of the RNC has passed.  Let's have a look (together - I didn't watch).

I see two masks.  Apparently there are still two people in the administration who give a shit about other people.  Tell me old Deputy Dawg Ross fell asleep before it was all over.  He'll be lucky if he doesn't contract covid-19, because he sure doesn't look like someone who could survive it.

NPR's home page today:

I suspect Daniel Dale was handling this CNN fact-checking Trump in real time.  Kudos.

She needs to work on her poker face.

And in payback is a motherfucker news...

The first lady also had her social media moment in the spotlight on the final night of the convention, wearing a dress that easily allowed her to be “green-screened”. The internet soon went to work and before long she appeared variously to be endorsing Joe Biden, the nation’s coronavirus death toll, and the weather.

  Guardian

The Nazi uniform she wore for her speech has been paid in full.

Just disgusting.

FACT CHECK: Trump's Address To The Republican Convention, Annotated

UPDATE:

By the time he hit the middle-school history textbook peroration of Thursday night’s extended violation of both pandemic safety protocols and federal law, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago could barely stand up for falling down.

[...]

(If he’d ever had the aesthetic sense god gave a goat, I would have wondered if his exhausted affect was a result of his being confronted with some of the worst writing ever handed to a politician. There were crows cawing on the South Lawn of the White House Friday morning that were more uplifting than this.)

[...]

Back when I was a sports columnist for a daily newspaper, I would have to write a column off the Boston Marathon every year. This ensured that I was always around at the finish when the noble souls who’d been on the road for four or five hours would stumble triumphantly down Boylston Street and collapse over the finish line. Except for the part about being noble, that’s what the president looked like at the end of his 66-minute address. For the most part, someone managed to keep him chained to the teleprompter, which must have taken all the strength he could muster. The crowd, ummasked, much of it, did the best it could to pep him up, chanting and cheering...and, very likely, spreading the virus. But he still sounded as though every word weighed 50 pounds.

By now, the staggering cargo of lies and misinformation has been ground into a fine powder by dozens of people tasked with that thankless job. [...] But it was his exhausted aspect that most interested me. Is it possible that the burden of being a monstrous fraud his whole life has become too much for a septuagenerian to bear? The newspapers are filled these days with his own family members giving him up. If he wins re-election, he will be stuck in a job he hates until he’s 78 years old. That has to look like a long, dark road ending in a darker place.

I have no illusions—or sympathy. Perhaps, once he’s out doing rallies again, unfettered by prepared texts, he’ll draw strength from his adoring crowds. He has to get re-elected to keep himself and a lot of other people safe from hungry prosecutors. Whoever is running him, here and abroad, likely still has plans for this country. And his base of support remains solid, even though everything on top of it is wavering and tottering. But, on Thursday night, none of that mattered. He ran down a calendar of American greatness like a man asking the attendant for more pudding. Being president kept him up way past lights out.

  Charles P Pierce

Superspreader event

Why doesn't he just put a big gold TRUMP sign on the top of the White House and be done with it?  Oh wait, that's coming on November 4.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Day 3 of the RNC circus

He'll have to get it there first, Lara.

The Donald Trump of Richard Grenell's imagination perhaps.

And, screw the daughter, Kellyanne did it...

They're just gaslighting.  Playacting as uberwealthy.  He DID need it.  For the emoluments to salvage his increasingly drowning properties.

Great makeup job again.

All this was happening as a category 4 hurricane was barreling down on the gulf coast.  Total lack of concern.

And tonight is the last night - the big night - when the liar in chief is introduced to speak by his daughter-wife.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.