CNN’s Ratings Have Crashed Since Trump Left Office. We Shouldn’t Be Surprised.

According to the Daily Wire, “CNN has lost about a million viewers on average each night since President Donald Trump left the White House, and the liberal network is drawing nearly 50% fewer viewers in the key 24-54 age group.”

Fox News reported that “CNN averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers from Nov. 4, the day following the presidential election, through Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. But viewers fled the liberal network once President Biden took office, and CNN has averaged only 1.6 million primetime viewers from Jan. 21 through March 15.”

“CNN’s viewership during the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m. ET dropped 36% since Biden took office after it spiked following Election Day. CNN’s primetime viewership decline was even sharper among the key demographic of adults age 25-to-54, plummeting 47% during the same period,” Fox added.

This report comes as CNN’s coverage has made an overt pivot to focus on conservative media. For example, Brian Stelter claimed last weekend that “Tucker Carlson is the new Donald Trump,” and that Carlson had “taken Trump’s place” as the leader of the conservative movement.

The fact is that CNN is now struggling to decide how to survive in a post-Trump world, and their viewers are waking up from their Trump-induced slumber.

After all, CNN essentially spent the entirety of Trump’s presidency as the on-screen “anti-Trump” platform, embracing any number of conspiratorial or later debunked stories if they could be used to undermine or attack the former Republican president. Their obsession with opposing Trump — rather than reporting the news — came to a climax during the January 6 riots in Washington, D.C. 

“From Election Day through Inauguration Day, when Democrat Joe Biden was sworn in to succeed Trump as president, CNN was the most-watched cable news network in both total viewers (1.8 million),” reported USA Today at the time.

To the despair of those at CNN, however, by achieving their goal of unseating President Trump and replacing him with President Biden, they have destroyed their singular focus. As the Biden administration continues to wobble under a variety of policy failures — including a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and a wide assortment of authoritarian and radical executive actions imposed by Biden — CNN simply cannot afford to “report” the news again.

This leaves them with an uncomfortable decision to make — what next? What next, after Trump? Who can fill his boogeyman shoes?

Unfortunately for CNN, Trump was a unique figure, with every attempt by the “objective” outlet to replace him reminding us of his unprecedented role in modern American politics and culture. When CNN rushes to claim that Tucker Carlson, or QAnon, or Majorie Taylor Greene is the “new Trump,” their strategy of scapegoating and distracting becomes even more laughable. When Don Lemon descends into apparent ideological madness and Chris Cuomo refuses to report on major scandals, their claim of objectivity becomes even more ridiculous. When Brian Stelter leans into the camera and warns of the actual danger lurking in the GOP, their entertainment value falls through the floor.

Is it any surprise that millions of viewers are walking away from CNN?

Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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