The President of the United States took to Twitter this morning to tell a bold-faced and obvious lie to the American people.
It appears that Donald Trump is intent on making his infamous January 2017 lie about the crowd size at his inauguration ceremony an annual tradition, as he finally broke a stunning two-day Twitter silence in order to proclaim that his State of the Union address on Tuesday had the highest television ratings in history.
Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 1, 2018
That is demonstrably false, by any measure.
President Obama’s first State of the Union address in 2010 was seen by 48 million Americans, but even that pales in comparison to Bill Clinton’s first State of the Union address in 1993, which racked up an impressive 66 million viewers.
But when it comes to humoring the president’s ego and pandering to his obsessive need to be at the top of numerical qualifiers – whether the subject is the popular vote, Apprentice ratings, or inauguration crowd size – Trump has already proven he’s not the kind of man to let a silly little thing like “facts” stand in his way.
