I'm pretty sure that the Pravda Media didn't understand that trumpeting the relatively low viewership of Trump's inaugural on the broadcast and cable channels was a big self-own.
And another 26M on YouTube and Twitch. Another 17M on X.
— Meme-O-Holic (@Meme_O_Holic) January 22, 2025
Not including Rumble and all the other streamers.
Be honest, you liars. https://t.co/ioR2wUXYjz pic.twitter.com/QBbIEHoJuq
On X, many propagandists are laughing at Trump's inauguration viewership numbers, no doubt hoping to annoy Trump who is generally sensitive to his ratings.
Can anybody pull up internet viewership stats for Trump’s inauguration?
— William Bart (@WilliamHBart) January 22, 2025
TV is largely dead. pic.twitter.com/j9E44AJRYz
The only problem with their Narrative™ is that people were watching the inaugural; they just didn't want to watch it on the Pravda Media.
The reason that the inauguration has the lowest ratings on Legacy media of any other inauguration is because in 2024 legacy media died.
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) January 22, 2025
70 million people watched the inauguration on X. And then it got replayed another 35 million times.
And 5 million on YouTube.
And that is… pic.twitter.com/ROtgXajMDm
I'm not sure how aware the Pravda Media is of the irrelevancy of their own viewership numbers, just as I am certain that few understood that Trump's podcast and rally strategy would carry him over the finish line last November.
The ratings are in!
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) January 22, 2025
Nielsen says that 24.59 million people watched Trump's 2nd inauguration.
That's 9 million less than watched Joe Biden in 2021. And 5 million less than watched Trump in 2017.
This will piss him off. Bigly. pic.twitter.com/RnuLhw0u1X
Sure, they know they have a viewership problem and that the Trump strategy worked, but I don't think they have internalized the reality that they really are irrelevant when it comes to shaping The Narrative with the majority of people. It is such a shocking turn of events and radically different from where things stood in 2016-2021 that they are still shell-shocked. They may actually think that the low TV ratings meant that people weren't interested in Trump's inauguration.
Elon Musk has famously said that "You are the media now," and he is right.
You are the media now https://t.co/Klpdw941a9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2025
Some Democratic Party politicos--unsurprisingly, those in the podcast world--are beginning to get it. Ironically, the Pod Save America guys went on MSNBC, the most irrelevant of the irrelevant, to give Mika the bad news.
NEW: Mika Brzezinski asks how Dems can compete with Trump, gets told they are getting demolished by the sheer volume that Trump and his supporters get online.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 22, 2025
You are the media now.
Former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor admitted that conservatives are crushing Democrats in social… pic.twitter.com/bsH90M22Hl
Still, the left has yet to grasp what the slow death of the Pravda Media means. The left has relied on hoaxes, censorship, and dishonest coverage to dominate the infosphere for years. That dominance is gone, and with it, the foundation for their messaging.
Experience shows that conservatives have been able to win a lot of elections despite the near-total control over the media that the left has had for decades; now that the grip over the flow of information has slipped, conservatives will be in a better spot than they have been in since Reagan.
Conservatives shouldn't get cocky, though. The left still has a lot of cultural heft, even if it is weakening, and Republicans are quite good at sabotaging themselves. The playing field is going to be less tilted against us, but we still have to play the game well.
