While Donald Trump’s CNN town hall did well, ratings-wise, it wasn’t nearly as strong as President Joe Biden’s past town halls. In fact, it wasn’t even as strong as Trump’s own Fox News events in the past.

The event, moderated by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College, evolved into a toxic brew of Trump’s typical attacks, falsehoods, and abuse, Mediaite reports. That resulted in a wall of criticisms and recriminations aimed directly at CNN.

Quite frankly, that’s what the network deserves. When you put a hateful, wannabe dictator on blast, you should expect to get your culo kicked.

And unsurprisingly, he spent at least four minutes attacking E. Jean Carroll — despite the fact that a jury found that Trump sexually abused her — and now, Carroll says she’s thinking of suing him again.

Nevertheless, his advisers were thrilled with the performance, and the always ratings-obsessed Trump, ever the braggart, boasted about the size of the audience. Indeed, the event didn’t do badly—attracting twice as many viewers as competitors Fox News and MSNBC. It quintupled CNN’s average audience in the time slot.

One thing Trump won’t likely brag about: Biden’s past town hall performances pretty much blew his own town hall performances — including Wednesday night’s away.

CNN, in a memo on the event’s ratings, noted a total audience of 3.308 million for the town hall. The memo noted that it “ranked 2nd among total viewers, closely behind CNN’s 2020 Joe Biden Town Hall (9/17/20, 7:59p-9:15p; 3.465 million)” for single-candidate events beginning in 2016. “Trump’s did edge Biden out in the demo,” Mediaite reports.

Nielsen data compiled by Fox News shows that Trump’s town hall didn’t even come close to the audiences he attracted for half a dozen of his past Fox News events:

Trump’s current town hall attracted 3.1 million total viewers and 703,000 between the ages of 25-54, lower than six Fox News Channel Town Halls with the former president. Those events drew 5.1 million P2+ (in TV lingo, viewers aged two or older), 4.4 million P2+, 4.2 million P2+, 3.8 million P2, and 3.2 million P2+ respectively. Sean Hannity’s town hall on June 25th, 2020 was the highest-rated, per Mediaite.

President Joe Biden’s CNN town hall on Feb. 16, 2021, was the highest rated for the network, attracting 3.7 million P2+ and 912,000 A25-54.

But as soon as Trump concluded his town hall at 8 p.m./ET, viewer numbers dropped to 2.3 million in the 9 p.m./ET hour and 1.2 million for the 10 p.m./ET hour, losing out to Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle by 46 percent in total viewership, per Mediaite. And Fox News Channel handily won the 11 p.m. hour with P2+ and A25-54.

CNN’s memo also noted that Trump’s town hall “delivered a larger demo audience than Trump’s first town hall of the 2020 election cycle on Fox News, drawing +5% more adults 25-54 (781k vs. 744k),” and added, “the event was significantly ahead of Trump’s last town hall appearance on CNN in 2016 (aired 4/1216, 9 p-10:05p), delivering +53% more total viewers (3.308m vs. 2.16m) and +35% more in the demo (781k vs. 579k).”

That’s enough of the boring numbers and weird letters now.

This leaves me wondering how many people who actually support Trump tuned in and how many simply tuned in to see what kind of crazy remarks he was going to make this time. This, of course, isn’t the sort of thing that Nielsen can reveal. That’s too bad because, in one way, it would really tell us where Trump stands. Are his supporters running the show again, or are people tuning in to have a good laugh?