Kamala Harris’ First Interview Ratings Compared to Donald Trump

CNN’s interview of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has blown away a comparable interview of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance in the ratings.

Harris and Walz sat down for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, marking the Democratic presidential ticket’s first joint interview and the first major interview for Harris since taking her place at the top of the ticket. The interview followed a period of intense Republican criticism over a lack of interviews and press conferences for Harris.

Initial ratings released by Nielsen on Friday, which were expected to rise slightly in the final accounting, show that the interview of Harris and Walz drew in just under 6 million viewers—the cable news network’s best ratings in the 9 p.m. time slot since 9.5 million viewers watched Trump’s June 27 debate with President Joe Biden.

In comparison, Trump’s first televised joint interview with Vance, airing on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime on July 22, was watched by 4.266 million. The interview aired one day after Biden dropped out of the race and just over a week after Trump survived an assassination attempt.

Responding to a request for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed that other metrics, which could not be verified, meant that ratings for the Republican ticket interview “far surpasses the lowly rated” interview of Harris and Walz.

“America was eagerly anticipating an interview where Comrade Kamala and Tampon Tim would actually answer questions—after she refused to do any interviews of press conferences for 39 days—but what they got was a shameful display of lying of policy positions and basic facts,” Cheung said. “America tuned into a train wreck.”

“Meanwhile, President Trump and Senator Vance’s joint interview was a world-class demonstration of articulating clear policies that help all Americans,” he added. “If you add up all of the Nielsen ratings, digital viewership, and other mediums, the Trump-Vance interview far surpasses the lowly rated, poorly received Comrade-Tampon disaster.”

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris campaign via email on Friday.

Despite Cheung’s comments that Harris received “lowly” ratings, verifiable data of television ratings indicate that the Democratic candidate has outperformed the former president on more than occasion recently.

In addition to the joint interviews, last week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC), where Harris and Walz officially accepted their presidential and vice presidential nominations, outperformed last month’s Republican National Convention (RNC) in the ratings.

Final ratings show that a total of 21.797 million viewers watched all four days of the DNC, while 19.065 million viewers watched all four days of the RNC.

The Harris acceptance speech, which had 28.9 million viewers, also outperformed Trump’s acceptance speech, which had 28.4 million, despite the former president’s speech containing his first televised remarks following the assassination attempt.

Trump has long been fixated on television ratings for himself and his political opponents, mentioning “ratings” in at least 546 posts on his X, formerly Twitter, and Truth Social accounts since 2010. He has also regularly referred to “low ratings” as an insult, while treating high ratings as praise.