Donald Trump Passes the Buck, Blames the GOP For the GOP Convention’s Second Place Ratings

The man who has spent his entire candidacy saying really dumb, destructive things, disparaging other Republicans, and basically trashing everything the GOP once stood for has somebody to blame for the dismal ratings the GOP convention raked in, earlier this month.

“I didn’t produce the show — I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday,” the Republican presidential nominee told The New York Times when asked about the differences between the two parties’ conventions.

Neilson ratings data obtained by the Los Angeles Times found that Democrats edged out Republicans during each of the first three nights of the convention.

Trump wanted an all-star, reality TV extravaganza. Show business is his life, after all.

What he got was a lackluster dud, disappointing on so many levels, not the least of which was the vile treatment of anti-Trump delegates on the floor.

That’s not to suggest the Democrats didn’t have their own floor drama. They did, and plenty of it, as delegates loyal to Bernie Sanders were as worked up as the anti-Trump delegates.

Many had assumed that Trump’s television experience would lend itself to bringing more flair to the convention in Cleveland — Trump told The Washington Post in April that he wanted to add “showbiz” touches to the typically drab event.

But while Trump had Scott Baio from “Happy Days” and a video narrated by John Voight, Democrats marched out a panoply of celebrities including Meryl Streep and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, as well as a video narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Media commentators reviewed the Democratic National Convention as more tightly scripted than the GOP’s — its keynote speakers were the last to speak, ensuring media attention surrounding them, and the program included speeches by the party’s biggest names.

At the Republican convention, the party had to work around decisions by top leaders — including 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — to skip the convention all together. And the schedule at times put key speakers such as Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) after the keynotes and outside of primetime.

So Chachi isn’t that big of a draw? Who knew?

Then, of course, what could have been one of the most powerful moments of the GOP convention was when the mother of one of the men left behind to die in Benghazi spoke. Trump decided to upstage that with a call-in to Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, in order to have his ego stroked.

Priorities.

So while Trump is busy passing the buck, the voters are getting another peek at what a Trump presidency would look like.

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