Back in 2017, then-president Donald Trump predicted that "all forms of media will tank" as soon as he left office because "without me, their ratings are going down the tubes."
As per usual, Trump was right. He was right about Anthony Weiner. He was right about Rand Paul. He was right about the Middle East. It should come as no surprise that he was right about the media.
The Biden era has been a disaster for mainstream journalists. Bloomberg News and HuffPost announced massive layoffs in the weeks after Joe Biden was inaugurated. Professional fact-checkers are struggling to come up with new ways to euphemize Biden's lies beyond "slips" and "flubs."
When it comes to ratings, CNN in particular has suffered in Trump's absence. After going out of its way to promote Trump's candidacy during the GOP primary in 2016, the "news" network became the country's preeminent purveyor of expert analysis of the similarities between Trump and Adolf Hitler.
Since Trump left office, CNN has lost about a million viewers per night on average and has suffered a 47 percent decline in the coveted 24-54 age group since November 2020, the Daily Mail reported. After averaging 2.5 million primetime viewers per night between Election Day and Biden's inauguration on January 20, the network has since averaged just 1.6 million primetime viewers.
CNN's daytime viewership has also suffered a steep decline, from 1.7 million on average between November 4 and January 20 to just 1.1 million viewers since Biden was sworn in as president. Daytime ratings are down 44 percent among the 24-54 age demographic.
Trump's second impeachment trial in February provided a temporary ratings boost for CNN, but viewership fell instantly after his second acquittal in the Senate. The network has since been overtaken by Fox News in every viewership category and as of this week trails MSNBC in total primetime viewers.
CNN has responded by providing obsessive coverage of Tucker Carlson, declaring the Fox News host to be "the new Donald Trump." Fox News, meanwhile, has been covering the litany of scandals engulfing Democratic governors Andrew Cuomo (N.Y.) and Gavin Newsom (Calif.), as well as the unprecedented border crisis taking place on Biden's watch.