With more than twice as many Twitter followers as both the average network’s audience and the total circulation of the top 10 newspapers combined, maybe, President-elect Trump doesn’t need unbiased traditional media.
Trump’s 19+ million Twitter followers give him more than double the primetime audiences of CBS (8.81 million), NBC (8.42 million), and ABC (6.32 million). And, having added 400,000 followers over the past weekend, Trump appears certain to surpass the three networks’ combined average primetime audience of 23.56 million.
In terms of cable network primetime audience, Trump’s 19+ million Twitter following dwarfs the average audiences of Fox News Channel (#1, at 2.475 million), CNN (1.298 million) and MSNBC (1.113 million).
What’s more, the top 10 daily newspapers in the country have a combined circulation of only 8.29 million – less than half the number of people Trump reaches with each Tweet. The Trump-bashing New York Times has a readership (2.1 million) that’s barely more than a tenth of the president-elect’s ever-growing Twitter circulation.
Trump has employed tenacious Tweeting to communicate with Americans directly – without having his comments censored, spun, or misrepresented by left-wing media. Since joining Twitter in March of 2009, Trump (@realDonaldTrump) has Tweeted more than 34,000 times, averaging 4,400 Tweets per year.
In contrast, Pres. Obama (@POTUS) has used Twitter only 340 times - an average of fewer than a hundred times a year - to communicate with his 13.1 million followers since opening a page in June of 2013.
Thus, Trump has Tweeted 100 times more than Obama since joining Twitter, and 45 times more than Obama annually.
And, the bold, blunt, and often controversial Tweets by Trump often do get picked up and reported by liberal media – extending the reach of his comments even further. In the past week, for example, his Tweets have been covered by the likes of CNN, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday and Marie Claire. For its part, CNN has apparently taken to mind-reading in its article titled "What Trump tweets vs. What Trump means." [UPDATE: After Trump declared CNN "fake news," CNN replaced this article with a less pretentious headline and an article including "All of Trump's Tweets."]
Even the White House has defended Trump’s use of this new media tool to effectively get his message out in an era where Americans’ trust in media, particularly cable news media, is historically low and their awareness of its anti-Trump bias is high.
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