“Trump TV” has sunk to an embarrassing new low.
Donald Trump launched the “channel,” which is actually just a live stream on the White House YouTube account, after taking his war on the press to new levels.
It launched to just thousands of viewers before sinking to the unwanted record of 187 at the time of writing. But the new low is not even the most embarrassing bit for the 80-year-old president.
Just before 2 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went live on Instagram as she lay in bed with her 5-month-old daughter, Viviana.
The 29-year-old comms whizz looked shocked and quickly ended the stream without saying anything. That’s because she didn’t even mean to go live.
“Just accidentally went live while trying to edit a reel LOL,” she wrote in a follow-up post on Instagram. “Sorry to those who got excited... but maybe I should go live soon and I can answer some questions from you guys?! For now, we are going to take our Sunday nap. Byeee! 😆😘”
Leavitt was clearly embarrassed, and Trump might have been, too, because when Leavitt accidentally went live for a brief moment, she immediately drew over 1,000 viewers, far eclipsing the numbers Trump TV is raking in.
A grab captured by the Daily Beast showed that exactly 1,157 people watched Leavitt’s blunder. It is unclear how many people were watching “Trump TV” on Sunday at 2 p.m., but at the time of writing, fewer than 200 people are plugged in.
Low viewership has been a theme of the new channel, dubbed “essential” by the White House. It came around after Trump last week unceremoniously banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, and then NBC, ABC, CBS, and even Fox News suspended their pooled coverage of Trump in solidarity.
He launched “Trump TV” in response last Monday, and it opened to around 8,500 viewers. Soon, a livestream of a box fan whirring against a black screen and a video of a man with ugly feet getting a pedicure were outperforming it.
Greats such as “Rain on a Porch, Black Screen” and “Bass-Boosted Smooth Brown Noise, Black Screen” also vastly outperformed the official White House effort.
“The only channel doing worse is the Strait of Hormuz,” Jimmy Kimmel quipped on his eponymous show on Thursday evening, after using the Daily Beast’s coverage to roast Trump’s channel.
The whole saga casts doubt on the octogenarian former reality star’s claim to be the “king of ratings.”
