The 2016 election will be remembered for many reasons (hopefully, among these reasons will not be being the beginning of the fall of Western civilization), and one of them is that it’s the election where politics has come awfully close to doing what dystopian commentators and fiction writers have been predicting for some time: becoming reality TV! Donald Trump is, after all, more famous for being a reality TV star than he is for being a businessman — just as well for him, because he’s a shitty businessman — and his entire campaign has been based around the idea that any publicity is good publicity, and that events and the truth can be edited into pretty much whatever form you want, and then presented to those at home as, yes, reality.
And you know what’s important in the world of TV? Ratings! As such, then, the Donald will likely be crowing at the fact that his Republication National Convention nomination acceptance speech drew a bigger TV audience than Hillary Clinton’s Democratic National Convention equivalent. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Trump’s speech attracted some 34.9m viewers, while 33.3m watched Clinton’s speech a week later. Notably, however, the DNC as a whole drew a significantly larger audience than the RNC — over four days, the DNC attracted a total of 116.7m viewers, while the RNC’s four days drew only 100.7m. We’re betting the latter statistic won’t make it into any of Trump’s media releases, speeches, etc. Or perhaps he’ll just flat-out lie and claim that his party’s convention was more popular than his rival’s. Or maybe he’ll just blame someone els— AHA!