President Donald Trump bragged Thursday morning that his State of the Union speech received the highest ever TV-viewing figures.
There’s just one problem. It’s not true.
Trump used Twitter to thank his supporters “for all of the nice compliments and reviews” about his televised Tuesday night speech to Congress. He said the TV audience of 45.6 million people was “the highest number in history.”
The figure Trump cited, which media research agency Nielsen collated from 12 broadcast and cable networks, was correct.
But as Nielsen noted on its website on Wednesday, former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all achieved higher viewing figures for their State of the Union addresses.
Obama scored a 48 million viewer high in 2010. Bush’s most-viewed SOTU speech was seen by 62 million in 2003. Clinton’s high was 53 million viewers in 1998.
The 47.7 million people who watched Trump’s inaugural address to a joint session of Congress in 2017 also was lower than two of his three predecessors’ speeches on the same occasion. Obama scored 52 million for his speech, and Clinton had 66.9 million. Bush’s figure was 39.7 million.
It’s not the first time Trump has lied about the size of something. He infamously kicked off his presidency by exaggerating the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
Trump’s latest fabrication didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter: