Donald Trump says his State of the Union audience was biggest in history – it wasn’t

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning that his first State of the Union address was the most watched in history, attracting approximately 46 million viewers and yielding Fox News the largest audience of the evening with over 11 million viewers.

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“Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech,” the president said in a tweet.

“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!”

While his figures were correct, several reports note that this is not the largest State of the Union audience in history. The data analytics firm Nielsen reports that former president Barack Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address attracted a slightly larger audience of 48 million viewers.

Nielsen does say however that the State of the Union Address was the No. 1 watched event on social media on Jan. 30, prompting over 21 million social interactions across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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When broken down by network, CNN reports that after Fox News, the next highest number of viewers goes to CBS and NBC, which both averaged about seven million during the address. This was followed by ABC with 5.4 million, the Fox Broadcast network with 3.6 million, CNN with 3.1 million, and MSNBC with 2.6 million.

According to Nielsen’s numbers, the lowest ratings for the State of the Union address since 1993 went to Obama in 2016 with just over 31 million viewers. The highest ever went to Bill Clinton in 1993 with approximately 66 million viewers.

Trump also exaggerated the size of his inauguration crowd, saying it was the biggest crowd ever, although images clearly depicted a sparsely populated National Mall.