TRUMP IS TOAST: His Speech Draws Fewer Viewers than Any of His Prior State of the Union Addresses

While it seems like eons ago, Donald Trump came to the attention of most Americans via his schlocky reality TV show “The Apprentice,” where he play-acted being a successful businessman who weekly fired some poor schnook for not adequately performing a pointless task. The program was a clumsily scripted farce that had nothing to do with reality.

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Donald Trump Walking the Plank

The role that Trump hammed up so horribly has stayed with him throughout his foray into politics. He is still a miserable businessman whose ventures go belly up more often than not; he still gets off on firing people for no good reason, now with the help of his DOGE stooge, Elon Musk; and he is still driven by his egomaniacal dependency on constant attention and slobbering approval.

SEE THIS: OH-NO! Trump WH Aide Brags They are Running the Country Like Trump and Musk Run Their Businesses

With that in mind, it is likely that Trump is having a bad morning now that the ratings for his speech before the Joint Session of Congress have been released. As reported by Variety

“Donald Trump‘s address to Congress reached an average of 36.6 million viewers on Monday. That total puts the speech 13% above Joe Biden’s most recent State of the Union address, which reached 32.2 million viewers in 2024. Still, Trump didn’t manage to draw as large an audience as he did with any of his State of the Union addresses during his first term as president. His 2017 address reached 47.7 million viewers, followed by 45.6 million in 2018, 46.8 in 2019 and 37.2 million in 2020.”

So Trump’s ratings have been trending downward with almost every successive appearance for this annual address. That’s consistent with his decline in popular approval polling. In fact, a recent poll found that Trump ranked below every other president dating back to 1953. What’s more, the ratings for his inauguration placed 27% lower than those for President Biden’s. And you know that’s gotta tear at his innards.

In addition to Trump’s sinking ratings for his speeches, the breakdown of viewers isn’t anything to crow about either. Variety elaborates…

“Older viewers made up a significant majority of Trump’s audience. Nielsen notes that 70.7% of viewers were aged 55 or older, with 20.5% being 35-54 and 5.7% being 18-34. Additionally, viewership peaked from 9:45 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET, rising above the 36.6 million average to reach 37.9 million viewers.”

These numbers show that Trump’s viewing audience was heavily weighted toward seniors, whose interests he is actively working against. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the latest GOP proposal virtually guarantees that programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security will have to suffer sharp cuts in both funding and staffing.

The numbers also reveal that Trump’s audience drifted away long before he finished at 10:30pm ET. Clearly he is not as beloved as he thinks he is. Except, that is, for one particular segment of the television audience. As Variety notes, the Fox News portion of the audience comprised nearly 30% of all viewers, with the remaining viewers being split by at least 12 other networks. So he was mostly preaching to the cult.

Trump will also be disappointed to hear the results of a CBS flash poll following his speech. The positive reaction in that poll was 44%, which is not only less than a majority, it was dead last for similar presidential addresses going back 25 years. And that’s despite the poll being over-represented by Republicans over Democrats by more than two to one.

Even though Republicans were over-represented in this CNN flash poll, positive reaction for Trump still ranked dead last going back 25 years.

News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T20:57:11.173Z

This is the current State of the Union, as far the present occupier of the White House is concerned. It certainly does not bode well for Trump or his wildly unpopular Cabinet, including whatever the heck Musk is. And it confirms that Trump has no mandate to impose his radical, neo-fascist agenda on the nation. Now all we need is for Democrats to come up with an effective strategy for opposing him.

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Trump 2.0 Begins with Approval Ratings that Rank Below Every Other President Dating Back to 1953

While it may seem like it’s been two years, it has actually been less than two weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated to resume his occupation of the White House. In that short period of time he has already surpassed his prior term with multiple acts that would qualify for either impeachment or the invocation of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental unfitness.

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Donald Trump Circling the Drain

Among Trump’s growing list of impeachable offenses are his illegal firing of 17 inspectors general, his freezing of federal assistance and grant programs (that he has already been forced to rescind), his inhumane mass deportation plans, his vengeful revocation of security for former government officials who he regards as political foes, his inflationary tariffs that will mostly harm working class Americans, and his certifiably insane threats to invade and/or annex U.S. allies such as Panama and Greenland. No wonder he’s trying to transform his White House Press Room into a pure propaganda mill.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Secretary Pledges to Plant Pro-Trump Crackpots in the White House Press Room

In addition to the deplorable endeavors noted above, Trump is also trying to staff his administration with the most unqualified and anti-American roster of Cabinet officers ever thrust upon the nation. Notorious cranks like Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, etc., top his list of candidates to lead the country into an Era of Idiocracy.

So no one should be surprised that during what is usually dubbed the “honeymoon” phase of a new administration, Trump is suffering unprecedented unpopularity. According to Gallup “Trump’s Inaugural Approval Rating Is Historically Low Again.”

“At 47%, President Donald Trump’s initial job approval rating for his second term is similar to the inaugural 45% reading during his first term, again placing him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953. Trump remains the only elected president with sub-50% initial approval ratings, and his latest disapproval rating (48%) is three percentage points higher than in 2017, marking a new high for inaugural ratings.”

Contrary to Trump’s incessant babbling about allegedly having received a mandate from the American people, he is floundering with double-digit deficits to Presidents Biden, Obama, and Carter. He’s even below Nixon. The only president with a lower rating than Trump in his second term, is Trump from his first term.

Perhaps even more troubling to this malignant narcissist’s massive yet fragile ego, are the dismal television ratings for his inaugural address, where he was also crushed by his nemesis, Joe Biden…

SEE ALSO: Trump Gets Hit Where it Hurts: TV Ratings for His Inauguration Fall 27% Below Joe Biden’s

It’s also interesting to note that as Trump languishes at the bottom of the approval pile, the news network that he has said is “close to death,” MSNBC, and its star anchor Rachel Maddow, who he claimed “will be off the air very soon” due to her “horrible ratings,” are both enjoying a significant post election revival. The Wrap reports that “MSNBC saw a 61% ratings boost after Donald Trump’s inauguration.”

MORE HERE: Snowflake Trump Lies About Rachel Maddow’s Ratings and Predicts the ‘DEATH’ of MSNBC and CNN

These are unarguably difficult times as America struggles to cope with the monstrous mistake that it made due to the gullible (and misogynist and racist) disciples of the Cult of Trump, and the failure of the media to accurately expose the risks that he posed to democracy.

However, what remains true is that Trump’s abhorrent presence is still lacking in majority support and, hopefully, clear-eyed. patriotic citizens will be more committed to resisting it in the days (and weeks and months) ahead. There is still a chance that he could be removed by impeachment if Democrats regain the House and the Senate in 2026. So keep hope alive!

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Snowflake Trump Lies About Rachel Maddow’s Ratings and Predicts the ‘DEATH’ of MSNBC and CNN

Donald Trump fancies himself to be the world’s foremost expert on everything. He says that he knows more about the military than the generals; more about healthcare than doctors; more about the environment than scientists; more about the economy than the Nobel Laureates who study it.

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Donald Trump, Snowflakes

In addition to this extraordinary store of imaginary knowledge, Trump also regards himself as a crack media analyst whose experience as a reality TV game show host qualifies him to offer commentaries on the state of the television news business that he both despises and relies upon to feed his expansive ego. It’s why he obsesses so feverishly over the ratings of his frequent TV appearances that often fail to draw significant numbers of viewers.

SEE THIS: Trump Gets Hit Where it Hurts: TV Ratings for His Inauguration Fall 27% Below Joe Biden’s

Late Friday night Trump posted a desperate wail on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that attacked one of his favorite cable news foes, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. He raged that…

“Wow! Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings. She’ll be off the air very soon. MSNBC IS CLOSE TO DEATH. CNN HAS REACHED THE BOTTOM. This is a good thing. They are the Enemy of the people!”

There is a remarkable quantity of trash in that tirade. Let’s begin with the fact that MSNBC’s ratings have been quite good lately. In fact, according to Adweek, for the week of January 13, 2025…

“MSNBC’s primetime lineup averaged 758,000 total viewers and 64,000 viewers in the A25-54 demo for week-to-week gains of +5% and +16%, respectively. […] Among all basic cable networks, MSNBC remained in third place in total primetime viewers.”

So MSNBC’s ranking is rising and placed third among all basic cable networks. As for Maddow, her program drew almost three times as many viewers as the network’s total day average during the period. These are not exactly stats that forecast doom. And they come as Maddow returns to a 5-day-a-week schedule for the first 100 days of Trump’s occupation of the White House. Which is likely one of the factors that triggered his tirade.

GOOD NEWS: Rachel Maddow Will Return to Airing 5 Days a Week for the First 100 Days of Trump 2.0

It’s not surprising that the “death” that Trump is predicting for the network has no basis in reality. Likewise, his celebration of the network’s demise is totally in his own mangled mind. He has long been afraid of Maddow and MSNBC, and has explicitly – albeit impotently – threatened them in the past…

FOR EXAMPLE: Trump Threatens to ‘Come Down Hard on’ MSNBC and ‘Make Them Pay’ for Daring to Criticize Him

But then, what else would you expect from a wannabe dictator who calls the free press “the enemy of the people,”? and opines that the networks that he doesn’t like should not be permitted to exist?

WHAT 1st AMENDMENT?Wannabe dictator Trump posts comment whining that CNN and MSNBC "shouldn't even have a right to broadcast."

News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T09:54:37.215Z

UPDATE January 29,2025: Ratings continue to climb for MSNBC as the network posts a 61% gain since the Trump Inauguration.

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Trump Gets Hit Where it Hurts: TV Ratings for His Inauguration Fall 27% Below Joe Biden’s

Ever since the election last November, Donald Trump has been exaggerating – aka lying – about the scope of his victory. He repeatedly refers to it as a “landslide,” despite the fact that his margin of victory over Vice President Kamala Harris was a mere 1.5%, one of the narrowest wins in modern times.

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This is typical of Trump’s acutely narcissistic psychosis that causes him to obsess over measurements of the size of everything from vote results, to rally attendance, and even to his manhood. His compulsion to overstate reality is something that he has bragged about, calling it “truthful hyperbole,” or in plain English, lying!

SEE THIS: OMG! Pathological Liar Trump Says He is ‘the Most Honest Human Being God Ever Created’

Another metric that Trump clings to for emotional support is television ratings. His long occupation as a reality TV game show host has fused his fetish for Nielsen numbers into his corroding cranial cavity. But his dependence on audience affirmation may deal him a severe blow now that the ratings for his inauguration have been released…

“Trump’s second swearing-in brought in an average total viewership of 24.59 million viewers […] Viewership for the 2025 inauguration was down 27% from Biden’s 2021 inauguration, which scored an audience of 33.76 million viewers.[…] The 2025 inauguration also saw a 19.75% viewership downtick from Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, which scored 30.64 million viewers.”

UH-OH. Trump is gonna have an aneurism when he gets wind of this. Dropping below his prior inauguration would be bad enough. But getting swamped by President Biden may be too much for him to bear. Perhaps even worse for Trump, he also didn’t come close to President Obama’s audience of 37.8 million viewers in January of 2009.

If anything, Trump’s numbers should have been higher due to the freezing weather that forced his event inside the Capitol Rotunda, as well as forcing people to stay home and watch the lie-riddled affair on TV. Plus, he has the advantage of a dedicated Ministry of Propaganda – aka Fox News – to blast his orange puss to an adoring cult following that is permanently plastered to the channel. With regard to that, Fox did its part by delivering nearly half of the total TV audience (10.3 million viewers) for the inauguration day festivities. The rest of the TV audience clearly had better things to do.

This is further evidence that Trump’s reoccupation of the White House is not the popular ratification of his return that he pretends that it is. And he cannot make a rational argument that he has anything resembling a mandate to implement his extremist, authoritarian agenda. Unfortunately, that won’t stop him from trying. And it is up to the people to spread the truth, and to make sure that the cowardly, complicit, legacy media reports it.

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Ratings for Biden’s Oval Office Address on Passing the Torch to Kamala Harris Burn Trump Up

If there is one thing that Donald Trump has become notorious for (other than lying, hate speech, porn stars, etc.), it’s his MAGA-ified ego that consumes the vast majority of his badly crippled consciousness. Whenever Trump speaks there is a better than 99% chance that he’s talking about himself or whining about someone or something that he believes is disparaging of him.

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Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Being a malignant narcissist is a full time job. And among the duties are showing petulant outrage at any and every slight, no matter how petty or tangential. That’s why Trump spends so much time and energy attempting to ridicule his perceived enemies with infantile nicknames and asinine attacks for things that never actually happened. It’s ironic that he tries to use humor when he himself has no sense of it.

SEE THIS: Crybaby Trump: I Hate it When People Laugh at Me, and When Kamala Harris Laughs at All

Given Trump’s background as a reality TV game show host, he remains inordinately obsessed with ratings and reviews. If he doesn’t have the highest ratings, the biggest crowds, and the most devoted disciples, he is inconsolable. Consequently, he must be fuming over the news that President Biden, who is no longer running against him, is still beating him.

Biden’s Oval Office address on Wednesday evening drew an audience of nearly 29 million viewers. That’s 16% more than the 25 million that Trump had for his big nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention a few days before.

So Trump’s most highly anticipated speech of the year – that was poorly received and went on for an interminable 96 minutes – scored far lower than Biden’s brief, impromptu remarks explaining his passing of the torch to Vice-President Kamala Harris, which had already been reported.

MORE HERE: Trump Brags (Lies) About His Low Rated, Lie-Riddled RNC Speech that Put His Audience to Sleep

Trump is clearly troubled by his poor performance on television, particularly because he was beaten by his nemesis, Joe Biden, a man he regards as a senile communist. On his floundering social media scam, Truth Social, Trump posted his predictably scathing review of Biden’s speech, along with his pathetic and desperate denigration of Harris…

“Crooked Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech was barely understandable, and sooo bad!” […and…] “We’re not ready for a Marxist President, and Lyin’ Kamala Harris is a RADICAL LEFT MARXIST, AND WORSE!’

Notice that Trump provided no coherent analysis of either Biden’s remarks or Harris’ politics. He merely lashed out impotently with childish insults. Which is totally in character for Trump. He couldn’t put together thirty seconds of a substantive critique without diverting to electrified sharks or Hannibal Lecter.

Yet somehow the Republican Party is still all-in on their nominee, who is a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, financial fraudster, and aspiring dictator and/or messiah. This says so much about what was once called the “Grand Old Party” (GOP), but which is now neither grand, nor a party. All it is today is a cult led by an old and feeble-minded clown who is still losing to an opponent who is no longer in the race. If schadenfreude were a meal, Trump is catering a feast.

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Trump’s MAGA RNC Convention Suffers Sharp Ratings Decline From Prior Years and Biden Speech

The Republican National Convention launched this week and immediately rocketed into the hearts of the America people with such MAGA luminaries as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, puppy killing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, model and reality TV personality Amber Rose, White nationalist whisperer Charlie Kirk, and, of course, Dear Leader himself, Donald Trump.

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Donald Trump, Stock Market

The popularity of the GOP roster was promoted as a blockbuster lineup that threatened to break all records for television viewing as the Trump Train chugged into the nation’s homes via the media that it regards as the “enemy of the people.” Never mind that Trump is among the most despised political figures in decades who voters find repulsive for both his policies and his personality.

SEE THIS: Nearly 70% are More Worried About a President Who is a Liar than One Who is Old – Trump is Both

The ratings for the first day of the Convention are out, and they reflect just how deplorable he is held by the American people. As reported by Variety

“The first telecasts of the Republican National Convention on Monday drew in 18.1 million viewers across networks, per Nielsen.

“That total, measured during the 10 p.m. ET hour, accounts for 12 broadcasters and cablers: ABC, CBS, NBC, Scripps News, Telemundo, CNN, Fox Business, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS, with Nielsen noting that Telemundo only aired 9 minutes of RNC coverage.

“Fox News led the pack by far with 6.9 million viewers at 10 p.m. Next was ABC with 2.3 million viewers, NBC with 2.2 million, CBS with 1.8 million, MSNBC with 1.3 million and CNN with 1.1 million.”

It should come as no surprise that Fox News – Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda – would deliver the lion’s share of the convention audience. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation that watches more credible news sources got comparatively little exposure to the RNC’s unreality show. So Trump had sparse opportunity to spread his message to anyone but the already indoctrinated members of the MAGA cult. And Fox News benefited from the broadcast, despite Trump’s own vacillating opinion of the ultra-rightist outlet.

MORE HERE: TRUMP IS RIGHT! In a Mad Rage, Felon of Foy Declares that ‘Nobody Can Ever Trust Fox News’

It is notable that the 18 million viewers that watched the affair on Monday is considerably less than the 23 million that tuned into the RNC’s convention in 2016. And it is also only slightly more than than the 17 million who watched in 2020, even though that convention was largely scrapped due to COVID. Furthermore, this feeble showing occurred despite newsworthy highlights including Trump naming his vice-presidential running mate, and this being his first public appearance since the “Earlobe Stigmata” he received at his Pennsylvania rally.

What may be most painful for Trump is that the ratings for his convention so far are also far less than the 24 million viewers that President Biden drew for his post-NATO press conference just last week. So it’s another defeat for Trump at the hands of “Sleepy Joe.” It won’t be long before Trump whines that the Nielsen ratings are “rigged” and the whole thing is a “hoax” and/or a “witch hunt” aimed at “stealing” his victory.

THIS JUST IN: The RNC’s ratings for the second night also declined from 2016 and 2020. This year the Trump gala drew only 14.8 million viewers, compared to 19 million for each of the prior two conventions.

UPDATE: Trump’s acceptance speech also bombs in the ratings and in the reviews.

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Fox News Weighs in with a Typically Tunnel-Blind Take on the Firing of CNN Boss Chris Licht

The head of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, dropped a highly anticipated bomb on the media world Wednesday morning with the announcement that the troubled CNN boss, Chris Licht, had been terminated effective immediately. Zaslav informed his staff and the company via an internal memo that was mostly complimentary toward Licht, but conceded the obvious that “It didn’t work out.”

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Fox News, Bullshit Factory

Licht appeared to make the wrong moves at every juncture of his brief tenure. He began by promising to make CNN “more Republican friendly,” as if that were an appropriate journalistic goal. He sought to “balance” the truth with blatant lies and conspiracy theories. He clearly envied the ratings of Fox News and delusionally believed that he could emulate them. But why would any Fox viewer tune into CNN, the network they were indoctrinated to hate, when they still have Fox?

Licht’s changes only served to prove how poorly he understood the news business. He canceled the popular program, Reliable Sources, one of the only regularly scheduled media analysis programs on television news. And he fired its host, Brian Stelter. Then he moved Don Lemon to a morning show with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. Shortly thereafter he fired Lemon.

Perhaps the most brain-dead move by Licht was to tap Donald Trump for a town hall, moderated by Collins, that allowed Trump to lie almost uninterrupted for an hour and a half. Licht packed the audience with Trump supporters, and prohibited any displays of disapproval. It was so badly planned and executed that even CNN insiders were openly appalled.

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Following the Trump debacle, Licht promoted Collins, a former correspondent for Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller, to a primetime spot. And through all of this Licht also managed to alienate CNN personnel in front of, and behind, the camera. An extensive article documenting his failures was published with his cooperation by The Atlantic.

Several of Licht’s hand-picked lieutenants were also pink-slipped. But don’t expect much to change at CNN with Licht’s departure. Zaslav is still the corporate head, and right-wingers like John Malone are packed on the company’s board of directors. However, now that Licht is officially gone, his transient reign is being scrutinized by his former colleagues across the mediaverse. And not to be left out, Fox News weighed in with a gleeful obituary that was astonishing for its utter absence of self-awareness. Fox’s media hack, Joe Concha, celebrated the suffering of their competitor saying that…

“It was an internal coup led by on-air talent at the network, even its own media team, that ultimately brought him down. And why? Because many could not accept that Licht was attempting to move the network from being seen by conservatives and many independents as an activist news network, a resistance news network aimed at disparaging, through provocative and personal opinion, those right or right of center and thereby destroying the decent credibility it once had. And remember, he had inherited a network that lost 75% of its audience when you’re comparing early 2021 with the spring of 2022 when he came in. And new leadership there gave him marching orders saying basically, move this network back to the center.”

So Concha believes that Licht was fired because others at CNN “could not accept” his determination to turn CNN into “Fox Lite.” While there were surely those who opposed that boneheaded editorial detour, Licht’s fall from grace was more the result of his failure to advance CNN’s place in the cable news race. CNN’s already declining ratings just got worse as Licht implemented his plans.

Concha correctly noted that CNN’s ratings were awful. However, what he missed was that nearly every criticism he lobbed at CNN could have been aimed at Fox News itself. Concha specifically referred to what he thought CNN needed: “Less provocative reporting. More solid reporting. More Republicans on the air.” That’s coming from the media analyst at Fox News where they have virtually nothing but provocative “reporting” and Republicans on the air. He went on to note what he called “the audacity of hosting Donald Trump.” Which, by the way, Fox News is doing a week from Monday.

RELATED STORY: Trump To Be Interviewed on Fox News, the Network He Says is ‘Dead, Totally Fake, Unwatchable’

Concha also missed that Fox News has suffered a ratings collapse similar to that of CNN’s. It has lost fully 50% of its audience since they fired Tucker Carlson. And that’s on top of a 34% drop going back in 2021.

Consequently, if Concha’s analysis were to be taken seriously, Fox News should fire their brass, Suzanne Scott and/or Lachlan Murdoch. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that. While Concha thinks that CNN was failing because they had not moved “back to the center,” he’s perfectly happy to see Fox News stuck at the far right. Never mind that Fox News is languishing at lows it hasn’t seen in years. It’s losing to MSNBC. And its prospects for the future don’t look any better. But sure, focus on CNN’s problems instead of acknowledging how horrible things are at Fox, Joe.

RELATED STORY: With Lawsuits, Lost Hosts, and Lying Pundits, the Future of Fox News Has Never Been Weaker

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FAILING UP: CNN Boss Chris Licht Promotes Trump Town Hall Host, Kaitlan Collins, to Primetime

Last week CNN aired a town hall with Donald Trump, the twice-impeached leader of a seditionist conspiracy who was recently found liable for rape and defamation, and is currently being investigated for a multitude of crimes, including financial and tax fraud, hush money payments, hoarding classified materials, election interference, and plotting a violent coup.

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Donald Trump, CNN

The town hall was broadly disparaged as an infomercial for Trump’s aspirations to return to the White House in 2024. He was given wide latitude to lie, with only paltry pushback by the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. The audience was stacked with Trump supporters who applauded his most heinous remarks and laughed when he insulted the victim of his sexual assault. The program was so awful that many insiders at CNN were among the harshest critics…

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

In the days following the town hall, CNN’s ratings plummeted to fourth place, below the ultra-rightist gadfly network, Newsmax. So naturally, this week CNN is rewarding Collins for her hosting of the debacle with a new primetime show:

“On the heels of her performance moderating a town hall with former President Donald Trump, CNN CEO Chris Licht named Kaitlan Collins the new host of the network’s 9 p.m. hour starting in June.”

This schedule change was actually rumored to be in the works prior to the town hall, which was to serve as both an introduction and an advertisement for Collins in her new role. Which, in retrospect, doesn’t seem like it was a very good idea.

CNN appears to be making good on the journalistically inappropriate promise of its CEO, Chris Licht, to make the network “more Republican friendly.” They are replacing the more left-leaning journalist, Don Lemon, with Collins, a former correspondent with the Tucker Carlson founded “Daily Caller.” Never mind that Collins’ primetime debut has garnered mostly criticism and ridicule. One of the few people to praise the show was Trump himself (of course), who credited it with moving Fox News more to the right.

REALTED: Ratings Envy? Trump Says that His CNN Town Hall Spurred Fox News to Cover His Iowa Cult Rally

Perhaps Licht thinks that he can scoop up the disaffected Fox News viewers who are rapidly abandoning the network for having fired their High Priest of White Nationalism, Tucker Carlson. If so, then Licht is even dumber than Carlson looks. Fox’s audience has been trained to despise CNN, and they won’t be de-programmed by a one-night special broadcast.

As for Fox News, they are implementing some program changes as well. They just announced that Sean Hannity will be moved into Carlson’s earlier timeslot. And insiders are saying that Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld are also going to be given shows in primetime.

This presents a dilemma for Fox. There aren’t enough hours in primetime for everyone currently being talked about to have a show there. Since Hannity isn’t going anywhere, if Watters and Gutfeld get promoted, then Laura Ingraham is either fired or moved out of primetime.

All of these changes are going to inject some chaos into the cable news wars. CNN is driving viewers away by sucking up to the right. Fox News is alienating their followers by terminating their heroes. And all of that is going to create opportunities for MSNBC, whose schedule is remaining relatively stable.

It may take several weeks for all of this to shake out. But if CNN and Fox News continue to battle it out for the wingnut demographic, they will both continue to lose audience share to MSNBC and the various incarnations of “Bachelors” and “Idols” that are being served up on the broadcast networks. Stay tuned.

SEE ALSO: Trump Spills that CNN Made Him ‘a Deal I Couldn’t Refuse’ to Get Him to Do Their Town Hall

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Ratings Envy? Trump Says that His CNN Town Hall Spurred Fox News to Cover His Iowa Cult Rally

The fallout from CNN’s ill-conceived and dreadfully executed town hall with Donald Trump last week is continuing to drench the network in criticism and shame. Rather than producing an informative forum for assessing Trump, it has been widely disparaged as an in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

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Donald Trump Fox News

There is a growing consensus among media professionals that it was foreseeable mistake for CNN to provide Trump with a platform to spread the same tedious lies he has been promulgating for years about the 2020 presidential election that he says – without a shred of evidence – was “rigged and stolen” from him. And on pretty much every other topic Trump regurgitated his familiar distortions of reality, personal insults, and meritless self-aggrandizement. It was so awful that some of the harshest condemnations came from CNN insiders.

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Another indicator of how badly CNN misjudged this event was the elation it produced in Trump and his allies in right-wing propaganda. They were bursting with joy at what they considered to be a PR triumph for Trump. And Saturday morning Trump bragged, in a post on his floundering Twitter scam, Truth Social, that the CNN debacle had led to a major media victory for him…

“FoxNews called to inform us that they will be airing the entire Iowa Rally tonight. They saw the record numbers done on CNN and want in on the action. Also, just out, I am leading DeSanctimonious by almost 30 points in FLORIDA, and leading Crooked Joe Biden BIG! See you later in Iowa.”

First of all, CNN’s numbers were hardly records. They drew about three million viewers, which is not uncommon for special news events on CNN. And while their ratings may have spiked during the town hall, they returned to their prior low standings immediately after the program was over. Still, CNN management was so tunnel-blind that they reprimanded their media correspondent, Oliver Darcy, for being “too emotional” in his accurate reporting of the town hall criticism.

Typical of Trump’s disloyalty and short attention span, just an hour after posting his delight that Fox News would offer live coverage of his Iowa rally, he posted another comment telling his cult followers to watch it on Newsmax instead.

That may be for the best since Trump’s assertion that Fox would carry it has conspicuously not been confirmed by Fox News. This, of course, wouldn’t be the first time that Trump lied about something. According to Newsweek

“Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday morning that Fox News informed him that the network will air the entire rally, however Fox News didn’t respond to Newsweek’s request on Saturday morning for confirmation that it would broadcast the event.”

What’s more, Fox News has not bothered to promote this alleged rally coverage of Trump’s Iowa affair. However, Fox News has been hyping their live coverage of both an event with Ron DeSantis (who coincidentally will be in Iowa on the same day as Trump), and a speech by President Biden at Howard University. So the absence of any notice of Trump’s rally is, to say the least, curious.

It is still possible, of course, that Fox News will air Trump’s rally, despite the fact that haven’t been doing so for several years now. That’s because they have been been rapidly losing viewers since the disclosures of their blatant lying revealed in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. And even worse, Fox’s firing of their MAGA, white nationalist heartthrob, Tucker Carlson, has accelerated their ratings disaster. So they may be in a state of desperation and panic.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson’s New Twitter Show Announcement is a Steaming Mess of Incoherent Contradictions

Finally, because Trump is incapable of making any statements that contain only a single lie, he also noted in his posting that he is “leading Crooked Joe Biden BIG!” For the record, Biden is beating Trump in most recent general election polls. But if he wants to deceive his followers into believing that he’s running ahead of Biden, let’s let him do so, and they can have a big surprise come election day.

UPDATE: Due to a tornado watch being in effect, Trump has canceled his rally. Apparently god is “woke.”

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Interview on 60 Minutes Was a Propaganda – and Ratings – Flop

On Sunday night CBS News humiliated itself by presenting a sappy personal profile of Republican QAnon representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, on its perennial news magazine, 60 Minutes. The interview was conducted by Lesley Stahl who, while having a renowned reputation as a journalist, made some amateurish mistakes in both her questioning and framing of the extremist congresswoman.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon

The interview was rife with flagrant falsehoods by Greene, along with her attempts to rewrite history (videos below). She denied her grossly offensive comments about Democrats, about whom she used tortured and twisted logic to malign as pedophiles. She refuted her prior statements approving of shooting Nancy Pelosi. She pretended that she had nothing to do with posts on her Twitter account asserting that the mass shooting at the Parkland school was a “false flag” operation by gun safety advocates. That’s not the first time that she made that charge. She said the same thing about the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

All of these, as well as many other disgusting sentiments, were well documented and a few were displayed on screen as Greene issued her denials. And anyone who has been paying attention knows the depths to which Greene’s extremism descends.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene Floats Fascist Proposal for Red States to Prohibit Democrats From Voting

The good news is that Green’s interview was not widely disseminated. The Nielsen ratings for 60 Minutes Sunday night were the second lowest for the season to date. And this episode was 33% lower than last weeks episode. Greene was the headliner for the program and, thus, is entitled to full credit for its failure.

Apparently America wasn’t interested in tuning in to her bullpucky. Perhaps fittingly, Nielsen reported that 6.66 million people watched the show. That’s an audience figure that should please the demonic demographic within the Republican Party.

It was irresponsible for CBS to give Greene a virtually unchallenged platform to advance her crackpot conspiracy theories. Stahl should make a point of following up the interview with a fact check and rebuttal on next week’s program. That probably won’t happen. But at least we can be encouraged by the low interest of American TV viewers in Greene’s gibberish and lies. Hopefully the only thing that people remember from this interview is how nuts the GOP has become to elevate someone like Greene.

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