Ratings say nobody watched Donald Trump’s Afghanistan speech

| 4:36 pm EDT August 22, 2017
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Donald Trump was great for television ratings during the election. In fact he was so good for ratings that cable news was largely willing to sit back and let him create his own narratives and controversies by airing his speeches and rallies verbatim, instead of bothering to report on any of his real scandals. But by now it’s a different story. In fact, based on last night’s numbers, no one on either side has much interest in hearing from Trump at all.

Trump’s Afghanistan speech last night was in prime position for ratings. It aired on every major news channel and it wasn’t up against anything; its primary competition was a bad preseason Cleveland Browns game. And yet Trump only managed to draw around seventeen million viewers, according to Variety (link). That’s roughly five percent of the country. And it’s less than half the number of people who tuned in for President Obama’s Afghanistan speech (link). The key here is that even Trump’s own base largely didn’t care to tune in to hear him speak last night.

Trump may get a large and enthusiastic turnout of twenty thousand people or more at his Phoenix rally tonight. But that’ll just be his inner legion of superfans who mindlessly drool over his every word. Trump’s problem is that he’s been steadily losing his least enthusiastic supporters since he took office. He’s losing the people who never loved him and have only ever passively supported him, and are now letting him go. He’s gone from mid-forties to mid-thirties in approval ratings polls, meaning he’s lost around one-fifth of the people who supported him in January.

Donald Trump can keep his spirits boosted by pandering to his small legion of superfans at rallies. But he can’t keep his presidency afloat based on them alone. He’s losing people. He’s been losing them. And now he’s at a point where, even on a night when his primetime speech aired live on every network and cable news channel, the vast majority of his own voters didn’t bother tuning in. He can enjoy his Phoenix event all he wants; it won’t prevent his approval rating from inevitably falling into the twenties.