You are currently viewing More Than 36 Million Watched Trump’s Address to Congress on Live TV

The annual presidential speech is one of the last remaining mass-audience media moments available to a national politician.

About 36.6 million Americans watched President Trump live on television on Tuesday night, tuning in for his 100-minute speech to a joint session of Congress — the longest of its kind in the modern era.

Nielsen, the ratings agency, said the live television audience for Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and often pugilistic address was up 13 percent from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s final State of the Union speech a year ago.

The annual presidential speech to Congress is one of the last remaining mass-audience media moments available to a national politician. Mr. Trump, a connoisseur of television and a former star of reality TV, moved to take advantage of the large audience, repeatedly taunting the Democrats in the chamber and boasting of a new “golden age” in the country.

Nielsen ratings mostly measure traditional television

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