Trump's Inauguration Ratings Are Sure To Send His Fragile Ego Into Overdrive
As much as he tries to project a tough guy image, President Donald Trump has as fragile an ego as anyone. From social media beefs to railing against late-night TV hosts, he's is prone to lash out at any perceived slight. So when he learns that his inauguration had somewhat low ratings? Expect him to take to Truth Social to tell you how it was actually the most-viewed inauguration ever. Nielsen estimates that 24.6 million people watched Trump's inauguration on Monday, January 20, 2025, across a variety of networks, like CNN and Fox News. That is a sharp decline from former President Joe Biden's inauguration, with an estimated viewing audience of 33.8 million viewers, and Trump's first inauguration in 2017, which drew in 31 million viewers. Like most Americans at home, not even some political figures wanted to watch the ceremony — Michelle Obama wasn't the only one missing from Trump's inauguration.
A visual to show how the billionaire donors (and their spouses!) got better seats than anyone else including Trump's Cabinet nominees. pic.twitter.com/Cw0iX0abEz
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 21, 2025
It's especially not a good look after the event was moved indoors to the Capitol rotunda as opposed to outside, where it's traditionally held and can draw in a larger audience — large crowd sizes being something Trump isn't exactly used to. Many of his supporters who traveled to DC for the inauguration were (literally) left out in the cold while billionaire donors like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were given prime seats for the ceremonies. Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen summed it succinctly on X, formerly Twitter, writing, "Trump hanging his supporters in DC out to dry in favor of an exclusive inauguration where only his inner circle and top donors can attend is the perfect metaphor for this administration and today's GOP."
Why didn't people watch Trump's inauguration?
There were several factors at play for why President Donald Trump's second inauguration pulled in fewer viewers than his first. As the AP pointed out, the viewership number is based on the average number of viewers watching throughout the day's coverage. Because coverage for Trump's inauguration went longer than in past years, until 7:30 PM Eastern, people tuning out toward the end of the day likely brought down the average.
Fifteen networks broadcast inauguration coverage, and which networks people tuned into tell a simple story. Fox News, the hard-right entertainment network known for supporting Trump, drew in 10.3 million viewers according to Nielsen, while ABC, CBS, and NBC all pulled in between 4.1 and 4.7 million viewers. Left-leaning networks CNN and MSNBC only had 1.7 million and 848,000 viewers, respectively, showing that impassioned Trump supporters flocked to Fox to watch the ceremonies while progressives didn't want to engage with coverage in the slightest.
The simplest explanation for why people didn't take in Trump's inauguration on Monday is that traditionally, regardless of party affiliation, second inaugurations just don't draw in viewers in the same way a president's first inauguration does. A 2009 report from Nielsen showed that every re-elected president's second inauguration, aside from Richard Nixon's in 1973, had a smaller audience than their first. This held firm in 2013 as well, when Barack Obama's inauguration lost 17 million viewers — a 46% drop compared to his 2009 ceremony.