But is he wrong?
Donald Trump hit the ground running on January 20 when he was inaugurated for his historic second term. On day one, Trump signed several executive orders, rescinding several orders issued by the Joe Biden administration, ending DEI programs in the federal government, and taking action on immigration, among many others.
And he hasn’t stopped, already issuing 73 executive orders and 23 presidential proclamations during the first month of his term.
Of course many of these have ruffled feathers on the other side of the aisle, including an executive order announcing the formation of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by Elon Musk. The department has already been hard at work trying to identify wasteful spending and make cuts to the government, which includes layoffs and ending programs that the administration doesn’t agree with like USAID.
Naturally, the media has spent a lot of time bashing Trump for…well, pretty much everything he’s doing, and they’re having a hard time keeping up with the breakneck pace that the administration is moving.
But Vice President JD Vance doesn’t sound too worried about the criticism from outlets like CNN – because nobody is watching anyway.
Vance took a shot at the network, which frequently criticizes the Trump administration during their media coverage, during a speech at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, today in Maryland.
During his conversation, the moderator pointed out that the press is having a hard time keeping up with everything the administration is doing, calling it a “shock and awe strategy.” And Vance responded with a jab at the failing news network:
“I do think that we’ve had maybe more executive orders than CNN has viewers, so hello to our friends at CNN.
I actually think that their plan was they were going to go all in on anti-Trump, and hope that he could save CNN in the same way that he did, frankly, in 2017, because nobody really watched the network until he became president in 2017.
But that’s maybe the one thing the president has been unable to do, unable to save CNN’s ratings over the last few months.”
Sounds a lot like his boss, eh?
And of course he’s not wrong. Among the major networks, Fox News has 9 of the top 10 shows in total viewers, with only MSNBC even cracking the top 10 with Rachel Maddow in 9th place.
Compared to last year, CNN’s viewership in January was down to an average of 421,000 per day, a 9% drop from the same time last year, while Fox News saw a 53% increase in viewership over last year with 1.92 million viewers. Even MSNBC, which leans to the left like CNN but doesn’t shy away from it and try to appear unbiased like CNN does, had an average of 506,000 viewers per day, which was down 34% from the same time last year but still managed to beat CNN for the #2 spot.
CNN also announced in January that they would be laying off 200 employees as part of a “restructuring” and shift to digital operations, blaming their sagging ratings on people moving away from cable news – despite the fact that Fox News saw an increase in viewers.
There are a lot of things that are different this time around than they were during the first Trump administrations, when networks could count on ratings boosts by bashing the president and fear-mongering about everything he does. This time around, Trump is not only more popular than he’s ever been before (the top story on CNN right now is, ironically, about Trump’s record high approval ratings), but he’s also a known entity at this point. People know what they’re getting with Trump, and there’s no reason for anyone to rely on the media to explain it to them.
We also see a lot more people turning to social media and alternative media like podcasts for their news and analysis, making networks like CNN increasingly obsolete. If you’re looking for someone to bash Trump, you can pretty much find it anywhere on TV or on social media. Why does anybody need to watch Jake Tapper for that at this point?
But hey, maybe VP Vance can help get them some viewers when they report on his comments from CPAC.
JD Vance: "I do think that we have had maybe more executive orders than CNN has viewers." pic.twitter.com/7WMsENIWLN
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 20, 2025
