Pelosi Outsmarted Herself on the SOTU
by David Catron
February 7, 2019, 12:06 AM
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi withdrew her original State of the Union invitation, preventing President Trump from delivering the address as scheduled on January 29, she was probably surprised when he responded with such calm forbearance: “This is her prerogative. I will do the address when the shutdown is over.†By the time Trump finished the rescheduled speech Tuesday evening, she no doubt understood that her petty political ploy had been a blunder. Trump, being no mean showman, had long since realized that the highly publicized delay would increase public interest in the speech — and that is precisely what happened.
By the time he entered the House chamber, it was already obvious that the national audience would very likely exceed last year’s larger-than-usual viewership for such speeches. This is not typical for the SOTU address. The normal pattern is a reasonably large audience for a president’s first address, followed by a gradual decline in public interest each year thereafter. This was certainly true for Trump’s predecessor. Tuesday evening’s speech, however, drew a larger audience than did the President’s 2018 address. According to a report in the Hill, broadcast TV numbers from Nielsen show the audience share was 10 percent over last year’s speech:
The four major broadcast outlets — CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox — combined for a 16.3 overnight rating during the address Tuesday night, which could result in total viewership of approximately 49 million when final numbers, to include the cable news networks and other outlets, are in later Wednesday.
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https://spectator.org/pelosi-outsmarted-herself-on-the-sotu/