Trump condemned for QAnon dodge as Biden town
hall wins TV ratings battle
President refused to disavow baseless QAnon conspiracy
theory
TV figures show rival Biden event drew about 1m more
viewers
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Fri 16 Oct
2020 17.58 BSTLast modified on Sat 17 Oct 2020 04.37 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/16/trump-biden-town-hall-qanon-tv-ratings
Joe Biden
beat Donald Trump in their TV ratings battle from their duelling town hall
events, figures showed Friday, while the president faced condemnation over his
failure to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Biden, the
Democratic challenger, attracted almost 1 million more viewers, according to
Nielsen, even though Trump’s event was shown on more channels.
The figures
from the TV events late on Thursday will probably enrage the ratings-obsessed
president, who told aides he hoped to beat Biden and then use the numbers to
humiliate him.
Biden’s
town hall on ABC averaged 13.9 million viewers, CNN reported, citing Nielsen,
while Trump’s audience was about 13 million cross three channels. The
president’s responses to questions about QAnon were drawing condemnation on
Friday.
QAnon’s
followers believe that Trump is trying to save the world from a cabal of
satanic paedophiles that includes Democratic politicians and Hollywood
celebrities. It has been linked to several violent acts since 2018 including at
least one alleged murder.
The US
president has praised QAnon adherents including a congressional candidate. At a
televised “town hall” on Thursday, he repeatedly claimed to be ignorant of the
movement, considered by the FBI as a potential domestic terror threat.
“I know
nothing about QAnon,” he told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in Miami, Florida. ‘I do
know they are very much against paedophilia. They fight it very hard. But I
know nothing about it … I just don’t know about QAnon.”
Guthrie
forcefully interjected: “You do know!”
But Trump
said: “I don’t know. No, I don’t know.”
There was a
widespread backlash. Ben Collins, a journalist at NBC News, tweeted: “Outside
of a straight up endorsement, this is about as about as close to a dream
scenario for QAnon followers as is humanly possible.”
The fresh
controversy came as millions of people vote early, ahead of the 3 November
presidential election, and the coronavirus surges again with 38 states
reporting rising cases.
Trump and
Biden held simultaneous town halls with voters on rival TV networks in lieu of
their second presidential debate, cancelled after the president contracted the
coronavirus and refused to debate virtually. Although both candidates are white
men in their 70s, it proved to be a split screen for the ages, radically
divergent in both style and substance.
Speaking in
Philadelphia, Biden offered long, detailed answers and promised to follow the
science in combating the pandemic. “The words of a president matter,” he told
host George Stephanopoulos on ABC. “No matter whether they’re good, bad or
indifferent, they matter. When a president doesn’t wear a mask, or makes fun of
folks like me when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then people say it
mustn’t be that important.”
The former
vice-president conceded mistakes in a 1994 crime law that led to the mass
incarceration of African Americans and promised to take a firm position on
whether to expand the supreme court, saying people “do have a right to know
where I stand. And they will have a right to know where I stand before they
vote.”
But the
sober policy discussion on ABC was often overshadowed by Trump’s
characteristically vague answers to questions that no other American president
in modern times would even be asked.
He became
visibly agitated when pressed by Guthrie on his views on white supremacy and
his retweeting of a conspiracy theory that Osama bin Laden might still be
alive. And pushed on whether he owes money to any foreign bank or entity, Trump
replied: “I will let you know who – who I owe whatever small amount of money.
“When you
look at vast properties like I have – and they’re big and they’re beautiful and
they’re well located – when you look at that the amount of money, $400m is a
peanut. It’s extremely under-levered. And it’s levered with normal banks – not
a big deal.”
Much
criticised for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump claimed: “What
we’ve done has been amazing, and we have done an amazing job, and it’s rounding
the corner.” But more than 63,500 new cases were reported in the US on
Thursday, the highest number since July.
Trump also
misrepresented a recent study to make the false claim that 85% of the people
that wear masks catch the virus. “That’s what I heard and that’s what I saw.”
Biden holds
a commanding lead over Trump in opinion polls and fundraising. Trump’s
campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and related groups,
raised $247.8m in September, well short of the $383m raised by Biden and the
Democratic National Committee in the same period.
Recovered
from the virus, Trump has entered a frenzied spell of campaign rallies in
critical swing states but continues to show little message discipline. On
Thursday he renewed his attacks against Gretchen Whitmer, branding the
Democratic Michigan governor a “dictator” even as authorities announced charges
against a 14th suspect in a plot to kidnap her.
Whitmer
responded on Twitter: “One week after a plot to kidnap and murder me was
revealed, the president renewed his attacks. Words matter. I am asking people
of goodwill on both sides of the aisle – please, lower the heat of this
dangerous rhetoric.”
Democrats
are taking nothing for granted, however, following Trump’s stunning upset
victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
John Zogby,
a Democratic author and pollster, said: “I think Trump is in bad shape. It’s
very hard to see a path to victory. But as I say those words. I recall hearing
them and maybe even saying them exactly four years ago. I’m not ready to
subscribe to the landslide yet.”
Wall Street
is preparing for a likely Biden victory, however. Shares of the gun makers
Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger have both rallied around 8% since late
September. Experts predict a surge of gun sales if Democrats win control of the
Senate from Republicans, giving them majorities in both houses of Congress and
making it easier to approve gun control legislation.
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