Covering then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump drove CNN’s ratings to all-time highs.
Hating on Trump day after day has driven the liberal network’s ratings to a three-year low.
“CNN fell to No. 18 in prime time this past week,” AdWeek reported. “The network aired a lot of specials, re-runs, and gave some of its prime time hosts multiple days off. Nevertheless, a drop is a drop and CNN had its lowest-rated week in 5 years among adults 25-54, and its lowest-rated week in total prime time viewers in almost 3 years.”
On basic cable for total viewers per day, the list is:
- Fox News (1,331,000)
- Hallmark (1,158,000)
- ESPN (975,000)
- MSNBC (781,000)
- Nickelodeon (686,000)
- HGTV (598,000)
- Investigation Discovery (569,000)
- CNN (539,000)
- Lifetime (533,000)
- A&E (530,000)
That’s right, Hallmark has nearly twice as many viewers as CNN, though to be fair, this is the season for Hallmark Christmas specials.
And the ratings plunge had nothing to do with the Thanksgiving holiday. During the same period, Fox News increased its primetime audience by 6%.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh summed it all up.
“ ‘Trump’s gotta get impeached! Trump’s gotta get thrown out of office! Trump’s gotta get convicted.’ That’s all CNN did. It’s all MSNBC does. They make no pretense of covering any other news unless it can somehow be tagged to the effort to get Trump. Well, ‘CNN’s ratings have collapsed to a three-year low during the week of November 25th,’ a three-year low while what has been going on? While the Democrats and Robert Mueller have been investigating Donald Trump!” Limbaugh said on his daily radio show.
“They’re on the air because of hatred! They’re on the air because their management hates Donald Trump.” he said. “They’re on the air because all they have is this rage and hatred — and a bunch of genuinely IQ-challenged, stupid hosts.”
“So, folks, be of good cheer. Understand that most people watching that don’t want to see it. Most people watching it are not being swayed or persuaded by it, because Donald Trump is doing exactly what he said he was gonna do. He’s draining the swamp, he’s exposing the swamp, and so all of this irrational, delusional hatred is exactly what we want. We want people to see it, we want people to be affected by it — and they are seeing it, they are being affected by it. They are turning it off,” Limbaugh said.
CNN’s been hating on Trump for a long time. In May 2017, Harvard University researchers found in a study that CNN’s coverage of Trump was 93% negative, just 7% positive. “CNN and NBC’s coverage was the most unrelenting — negative stories about Trump outpaced positive ones by 13-to-1 on the two networks,” the study noted. “Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity.”
After the network fired economic analyst Stephen Moore — who Trump said he was going to nominate to serve on the Federal Reserve Board — Moore spoke candidly.
“CNN is the hate Trump network,” Moore said. “They just trash Trump every single hour of every single day. All they’ve talked about for two years is the [special counsel Robert] Mueller report — and how bad does it make them look now that it proved nothing?”