Show an ad over header. AMP  

Joe Biden not only crushed President Trump in ratings for their head-to-head town halls, Biden was a bigger draw for an earlier pairing of network town halls.

By the numbers: Biden had a bigger combined audience for town halls on ABC + NBC than Trump did for his ABC and NBC town halls. Biden drew 20.8 million for the two town halls combined, while Trump had 17.3 million.

Here's the breakdown, from Nielsen, via AP (omits streaming):

  • Biden's ABC town hall with George Stephanopoulos on Thursday reached 14.1 million people between 8 and 9 p.m. (when the 90-minute event was head to head with NBC).
  • Trump's NBC town hall with Savannah Guthrie on Thursday had 13.5 million viewers (NBC: 10.9 million, MSNBC: 1.8 million, CNBC: 720,000).
  • Biden's NBC town hall with Lester Holt on Oct. 5: 6.7 million (includes NBC, MSNBC, CNBC; NBC only was 3.85 million).
  • Trump's ABC town hall with Stephanopoulos on Sept. 15: 3.8 million people.

Axios' Sara Fischer, who tracks this closely, notes: Biden's town hall with CNN on Sept. 17, two days after Trump's ABC town hall, drew fewer viewers than Trump — 3.3 million, to Trump's 3.8 million on the broadcast network.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.