For all that a deeply divided America returned Donald Trump to the White House, are Americans growing sick of the Trump show in a way that the media in the US — and, for that matter, here — don’t get?
The rebooted Trump show bored Americans despite the star’s efforts to launch proceedings with a bang, via a flurry of serious, inconsequential and outright absurd executive orders (Gulf of MAGAland, anyone?). The Mad King’s coronation attracted 24.6 million viewers, a drop of 9 million, or 27%, from the 33.8 million people who watched Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration (ouch!) and a 6 million, or 21%, drop from the 31 million who tuned in to coverage of Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
Fox News and Fox Business Network were the most-watched outlets overall, with an average audience of 8.1 million, while ABC led broadcast networks with 3.7 million viewers. No surprises there — in 2021, CNN and MSNBC dominated viewing of Biden’s inauguration and Fox News was left behind.
It’s been pointed out that second inaugurations usually see a drop-off in viewing — Barack Obama’s first inaugural in 2009 drew an average audience of about 37.8 million throughout the day; his second in 2013 captured about 20.6 million viewers. But Trump’s second was very different, not merely in being a non-consecutive term — Obama’s will be the last double-term presidency until at least 2033, assuming MAGA Republicans don’t repeal the two-term limit — but, from a MAGA perspective, a triumph of good over evil, as Trump overcame his deep state enemies and the theft of the 2020 election to return to power.
But clearly, the narrative of overcoming a vast left-wing conspiracy didn’t excite that many Americans, even if they voted for him.
The numbers might give pause to US editors and producers who — like those in US colonies like Australia — have provided relentless wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s inauguration, his initial flurry of executive orders, and his musings and various obiter dicta.
This incessant coverage — whether outraged, obsequious, or purporting to be coolly analytical (hmm, what kind of deal could Trump do to get Greenland?) — is a key part of Trump’s political tactics: he is a spectacle, and the spectacle must never cease. Trump must always be the centre of attention, the image on the television screen and the front page, the subject of the chyron if someone else is on screen. Trump is constantly performing (possibly explaining his habit of waving at no-one) and needs constant coverage, even if there is nothing of substance to cover.
(A perfect case today is the obsessive parsing of Trump’s threat to increase sanctions on Russia as somehow signalling a reversal of his appeasement-based approach to Ukraine, when he has done nothing, and Joe Biden escalated sanctions against Russia before leaving office.)
It seems the mainstream media are repeating their mistake from Trump’s first term: focusing as much, or more, on what Trump says, versus what he does, with every utterance mined for meaning and nuance far beyond the capacity of an elderly, cognitively impaired and self-obsessed crony capitalist to produce. In this way, there’s little to distinguish the media, including media outlets opposed to him, and the QAnon fake, which purported to decode Trump’s words and actions against a secret cipher linked to the imminent crackdown on a global pedophile conspiracy.
That means every offhand comment, every jibe, insult and denial, every lie — all of which are aimed at maintaining and strengthening Trump’s image as a transgressive, disruptive avatar of his supporters’ resentment and alienation — are amplified even by those purporting to editorial neutrality, or committed to opposing him. This is why fact-checking by the media — despite extensive efforts and resourcing committed to trying to assess Trump’s incessant cavalcade of lies — has never worked. Trump supporters know that he’s lying, and don’t care, or actually like it, in the same way they don’t care what he actually does in office.
Without the torrent of media coverage — all of which is avidly consumed by Trump, who has likely already returned the Oval Office to its position as the premier Fox News-watching location in the United States — the constant spectacle that is core to his political success becomes more difficult to maintain. As Margaret Thatcher said of terrorists, he needs the oxygen of publicity to survive — and the media is, once again, eagerly providing it.
That will only change when editors and producers focus on what he and his administration do, rather than provide a platform for his performance. Maybe Americans are ahead of their media in that regard.
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