The Ratings for Joe Biden's First Address to Congress Are in, and They're Really Bad

President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress may have put Ted Cruz and several others in attendance to sleep, but most Americans didn’t even bother tuning in. In fact, according to Nielsen ratings data released Thursday, viewership of Biden’s speech took a huge tumble compared to Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress in 2017.

Biden attracted approximately 26.9 million viewers across all television networks and some streaming.

In 2017, President Trump had 47.7 million viewers.

Biden’s audience was 44 percent below Trump’s.

To put some perspective on this, the following video of Joe Biden falling three times while climbing the steps to Air Force One has 16.3 million views.

Joe Biden just fell 3 times in a row trying to go up the stairs to Air Force One pic.twitter.com/gTUTckUH32

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 19, 2021

Now, that suggests this one tweet got more than half of the audience of Biden’s address. There were likely other videos of Biden falling that got a huge number of viewers, so it’s very possible, if not likely, that more people have seen Joe Biden’s infamous tumble than watched his address before Congress.

Reuters tried to explain Biden’s poor ratings by stating, “Television audiences for live events have fallen sharply in the past year as audiences have gravitated to on-demand streaming services.”

But hey, according to the election, Biden is the most popular president elected ever. Right? Eighty million people? Yeah, I guess that adds up.