CNN’s DeSantis Town Hall Was a Viewership Flop

The National Pulse ^ | 12/15/2023 | WILLIAM UPTON

[SoConPubbie]

This past Tuesday’s CNN Iowa town hall event with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did little to boost the corporate news networks ratings. According to newly released viewership numbers, DeSantis drew just 622,000 viewers in the 9:00pm time-slot. Fox News’s Sean Hannity, also airing in the 9:00pm slot drew 2.1 million viewers the same night. The entirety of the prime time line up for MSNBC and Fox News significantly outperformed the DeSantis town hall, with the Florida Governor drawing about half the viewers as the far-left conspiracy theorist Joy Reid.

The DeSantis campaign has been plagued by an inability to connect with voters, with polls showing the Florida Republican running far behind the 2024 Republican presidential nomination front-runner Donald Trump. An aversion to engagement with hostile media has only compounded DeSantis’s problems, costing the Governor valuable air-time early on in the Republican primary. Despite a course correction on the candidate’s media engagement, it appears to be too-little-too-late with voters tuning out as former President Donald Trump’s primary victory appears all-but-certain.

In an effort to astroturf the appearance of voter interest, the DeSantis campaign has attempted to use increasingly smaller venues to disguise crowd sizes – among other campaign tricks. The National Pulse previously reported the Florida Governor’s campaign used ‘canned’ crowd audio in a 30-second ad-spot featuring Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. The clips featuring Govs. DeSantis and Reynolds in the video were pulled from the Iowa endorsement event, which appears to only have attracted about 150 people. In the ad, however, the audio alludes to far larger and enthused crowd one might see at a full-scale campaign rally.

[MinorityRepublican]

Donald Trump is the only one who can handle it.

One thing he can do is to get Alito and Thomas retire on the SCOTUS. Alito will be 75 and Thomas 77. Get them replaced so we'll be in good shape when Gavin Newsom take over in 2028.