Donald Trump hates a lot of things. He hates immigrants, he hates being fact-checked, he hates being criticized, but more than anything, Donald Trump hates to lose.
Which is why he’ll never it it when it happens. Trump continues to uphold the lie that he won in 2020, despite numerous lawsuits and careful examinations that prove he did not. He continues to claim that he’s the most popular president of all time — a bombastic lie — and that all those guilty convictions were faked and fraudulent. He’s all but guaranteed to stick to those same guns as information spreads indicating that former President Joe Biden got one last victory in before the end.
Trump’s first inauguration made numerous headlines in 2016, largely due to the rampant lies spread in its direct wake. If there’s one thing that takes priority in old Don’s mind, it’s popularity, and when his number of ers failed to impress, Donny just went ahead and inflated them. He’s all but certain to do so once again, particularly now that we know just how abysmal the showing for his second inauguration really was.
Trump’s second inauguration had among the lowest viewership of the last few decades, giving Biden one last win over his longtime opponent. A reported 24.6 million television viewers witnessed Trump take his second oath of office, which makes his audience the smallest to witness an inauguration since 2013.
Biden’s inauguration was watched by around 33.8 million people — nearly 10 million more than Trump’s. Even Trump’s first inauguration beat this one out with its 30.6 million viewers. The only presidents to suffer a smaller audience in recent years were Barack Obama — who in 2013 enjoyed only 20.6 million viewers — and George W. Bush, who in 2004 had only 15.5 million Americans watch his swearing-in. Even Beyoncé’s NFL halftime show had more viewers than Trump did.
As news of the inauguration viewership spread, I can practically feel Trump’s butthole puckering in rage. He’ll surely blast the numbers as “lies” and proclaim that he’s the most popular president to ever hold the office, even as facts contradict his brazen untruths. To most people, something like inauguration viewership is inconsequential — Trump is president after all, he already won the important victory. But to Trump optics matter more than damn near anything, which will all but guarantee a childish response to the Nielsen data.
Of all the presidents listed above, even with all their flaws, Trump is easily the most volatile and unpredictable. His inauguration viewership could be a blip on the radar, or it could send him spiraling. It’s all but impossible to predict how he’ll react to these things, which has American blood pressure shooting up across the nation.
That unpredictability is all well and good in a failed businessman or a hokey television star, but it’s simply unsuitable for a president. We need someone with poise and professionalism to run this country, not an edge lord teen who cares more about a nonexistent popularity contest than he does American lives. Unfortunately that’s what we’ll be dealing with for the next four years, as Trump prioritizes pointless optics over actual leadership.
Published: Jan 22, 2025 02:01 pm