Donald Trump Wins Tuesday For CNN

Donald Trump delivered another ratings win last night, this time for CNN which finished first from 9-10 PM in total viewers and in the news demo with its Trump town hall. Trump, and family, averaged 2.154M viewers, starring in AC360 Trump Family Town Hall. Fox News Channel followed with 1M viewers and MSNBC with 1.2M. In the news demo, the Anderson Cooper-hosted Trump family sit-down clocked 570K viewers, to FNC’s 348K and MSNBC’s 330K.

Among the highlights of the special, Trump dismissed Cooper’s suggestions Ted Cruz “outplayed” him in Colorado when Cruz scarfed up most of the delegates. Trump pouted that he knew the rules as well as the next guy, but the RNC has the system “stacked against me.” To which Cooper wondered why “For somebody who touts himself as somebody who’s an organizational genius, as someone who’s created this amazing business organization…you couldn’t create an organization on the ground that could beat Ted Cruz’s organization.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s kids told Cooper their Dad’s late night Twitter tirades just demonstrate how great and authentic he is.

CNN also finished first in primetime in the news demo (438K), ahead of FNC’s 366K and MSNBC’s 281K. FNC finished first in overall audience for the full primetime, with 2.1M to CNN’s 1.5M and MSNBC’s 1M.

Tonight is the Ted Cruz Family hour on CNN, 9-10 PM; Monday night, Cooper hosted the John Kasich Family. And, of course, these family gatherings are a wind-up to tomorrow night’s CNN-hosted Democratic debate from Brooklyn, moderated by Wolf Blitzer.