Convicted felon President Trump's long and dreadful Tuesday night State of the Union drew 28 million viewers, his lowest ever for any joint session speech a 40 percent drop from his 2019 address that drew 46.8 million, Deadline reports. Now sure, viewing habits keep shifting away from real cable and even seven years will show a difference, but it's still down over 20 percent from even his March 4, 2025 not-actually-a-State of the Union's audience of 36.6 million, per Nielsen's data.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/2/26/2370609/-SO-MUCH-WINNING-Trump-s-State-of-Union-Ratings-Ranks-Near-the-Bottom-for-the-Past-25-Years
Now another metric of success that Trump regards as the most important of all is flashing bright red signals of disaster. His television ratings for the speech have come in near the bottom for all SOTU speeches for the past 25 years. According to the Hollywood Reporter...
"Trump's 107-minute speech (the longest on record) drew about 27.8 million viewers across the seven most watched broadcast and cable outlets: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Fox broadcast network, MS Now and NBC. That's down by about 12 percent from 31.45 million viewers for those same networks for Trump's address to Congress last year. [...] Fox News led the way with 9.1 million viewers." The only years where Trump was not dead last were one for Biden in 2021 during COVID, and another for Biden in 2023 when inflation hit its peak at about 8%. Note that inflation at that time was higher worldwide than in the U.S., and that Biden brought it down to about 3% before his term ended. Whereupon his last SOTU rebounded to be higher than Trump again. Here are the numbers...
2026 (Trump): 27.8 million* 2025 (Trump): 31.45 million# 2024 (Biden): 32.2 million 2023 (Biden): 27.3 million 2022 (Biden): 38.2 million* 2021 (Biden): 26.9 million# 2020 (Trump): 37.2 million 2019 (Trump): 46.8 million 2018 (Trump): 45.6 million* 2017 (Trump): 47.7 million# 2016 (Obama): 31.3 million 2015: (Obama): 31.7 million 2014: (Obama): 33.3 million* 2013: (Obama): 33.5 million 2012: (Obama): 37.8 million 2011: (Obama): 42.8 million 2010: (Obama): 48. million* 2009: (Obama): 52.4 million# 2008: (Bush): 37.5 million 2007: (Bush): 45.5 million 2006: (Bush): 41.7 million* 2005: (Bush): 38.4 million 2004: (Bush): 43.4 million 2003: (Bush): 62.1 million
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