Trump’s New TV Channel Immediately Crashes And Burns

What a flop!
Trump’s New TV Channel Immediately Crashes And Burns
Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC/Compilation/license 2.0.
By Conover Kennard — September 22, 2026

Donald J. Trump finally got the television channel he apparently wanted—and viewers responded by doing just about anything else.

“Trump TV: The Essentials Station,” the White House’s new 24/7 YouTube livestream, launched Monday night with roughly 8,000 viewers. That might sound like a decent start until you watch the audience disappear almost in real time.

Within about 90 minutes, fewer than 4,000 people were watching. By 9 p.m., the audience had dropped to around 3,000. By 10:40 p.m., only a sad 2,425 viewers remained, according to The Daily Beast.

And things got considerably worse overnight.

At approximately 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, Trump TV was down to just 1,123 viewers as it replayed a year-old speech featuring Trump and King Charles. Apparently, even the king couldn’t save Trump’s ratings.

The numbers are particularly awkward, given that the White House’s YouTube channel has about 3.18 million followers. In other words, millions of people have already clicked “follow”—but remarkably few seemed interested in actually watching Trump TV.

The livestream comes after the White House banned CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO from its press pool, escalating Trump’s ongoing battle with news organizations whose coverage hurts his feelings. Rather than relying on the traditional television networks, the administration has attempted to create its own direct-to-viewer media operation filled largely with Trump speeches and other administration-approved footage.

So far, however, the president’s grand television experiment looks less like a media revolution and more like a livestream being watched by a few thousand people who forgot to close the tab. Bummer.

That is especially amusing given Trump’s longstanding obsession with television ratings and his self-described status as the “king of ratings.” The king, apparently, has a rather small kingdom.

This is just sad:

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