In conversations with allies and aides, former President Donald Trump is trying to project confidence over his ability to hoard attention, telling them that the viewership for his Republican National Convention acceptance speech was “tremendous” and won’t be outdone by Vice President Kamala Harris this week. But sources close to the Trump campaign told Rolling Stone that these boasts are often accompanied by prodding over what they predict her ratings will be on Thursday evening, a sign that Trump is worried about losing to Harris on yet another metric besides crowd size and polling.
So far, Trump is one-for-two in convention speech ratings. He drew more viewers than Hillary Clinton in 2016, but lagged behind Biden in 2020. His queries over the 2024 convention speech match-up against Harris come amid his roiling anger over Harris’ large crowd sizes, which apparently cuts deep into the confidence of a man who measures his political power by his visible popularity. Trump has insisted that he drew a larger crowd during the insurrection of January 6, 2021 than Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, while falsely accusing Harris of doctoring photos so that her supporters appear more numerous than in reality.
He also boasted about the ratings of press conferences he gave during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the disease left a floundering economy and thousands of dead Americans in its wake.
A Harris campaign spokesperson told Rolling Stone that “yes, of course,” they will mock Trump if the vice president’s ratings exceed his own, perhaps hoping to get into his head. Trump has a long history of seeking validation over his ratings with aides and TV network officials alike. According to a former Trump White House official, in 2018 the then-president ordered his aides to present evidence to the press that his State of the Union address exceeded all the TV ratings of his predecessors in history, even though no such proof existed.
“He was just getting angry that people in the media were going on TV saying his [first State of the Union address] ratings were lower than other times,” the ex-official told Rolling Stone.
Another former Trump aide, Sam Nunberg, recalled to the Daily Beast that Trump asked him and others to call ABC, Fox, and other network hosts to provide the exact ratings data for an interview he’d just done. Sometimes, Trump would make the call himself.
“Often, they wouldn’t send him the actual numbers but just transmit back something like, ‘They were fantastic, you won.’ He kept very close track of his ratings and always wanted the numbers so he could tweet them,” he said.