Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday was a massive ratings hit, according to the Los Angeles Times, setting a new daytime ratings record.
The Tuesday afternoon hearing, which the committee announced just a day ahead of time, featured 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Her dramatic testimony attracted 13,231,000 viewers across all major networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, according to numbers from Nielsen, a ratings firm.
In comparison, some of the most highly-rated shows on television were no match for the ratings Hutchinson received even though they are broadcast in primetime.
The ratings for Hutchinson’s testimony would likely have been even higher had the hearing not taken place in the middle of the day when most people are at work.
Fox, it should be noted, was humiliated with the ratings they drew for programming during the publicized Tuesday hearing, drawing a paltry 1.7 million viewers during the same two-hour time timeframe between 1 and 3 p.m.
Even more embarrassing for Fox is that while the they refused to televise the hearing, many of their hosts spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trying to shoot holes in what Hutchinson had said under oath.
Donald Trump was clearly watching, and has been positively apoplectic in his reaction, The Independent reports:
Deriding her as a “whack job” and claiming he hardly knew her despite her role as a senior aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, he also claimed she had asked to decamp to Florida with him for employment after the end of his presidency.
“I was going down to Florida with a group of people,” Mr Trump claimed, “great group of people, patriots, and her name was thrown out there and they said, ‘stay away from her.’ They said bad things about her.”
He did not specify who “they” were. Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony that when he found out he was not being taken to the Capitol to march on Congress with his supporters, he lunged at the wheel of his presidential car and then grabbed an agent in his detail.
