Donald Trump Humiliated: Nielsen Data Brands SOTU Address As A 'Mean-Spirited Flop'

Donald Trump's 24 February State of the Union address to Congress has landed with a thud on American television, drawing roughly 27.8 million viewers across seven major broadcast and cable networks, according to preliminary Nielsen data cited by OK! Magazine.

The same figures suggest a 12 per cent fall compared with Trump's 2025 address to a joint session of Congress, turning what the White House would have wanted as a second-term showcase into an awkward ratings story instead.

Why it matters is not just the ego arithmetic of a single night. The viewing drop, the unusually long runtime and the lukewarm response data together sketch a familiar modern problem for presidents who talk big about national renewal while the audience, quite literally, tunes out.

What is newly being argued here rests on preliminary ratings and reaction numbers, while the underlying political conflict inside and outside the chamber was on full display in real time, and it remains contested territory rather than settled history.

Donald Trump's Ratings Reality Check

OK! reports that Trump's audience was smaller than Joe Biden's 2024 State of the Union, which the outlet puts at 32.2 million viewers. It was also far below Trump's own first-term high, which OK! places at 47.7 million in 2017. In a media environment where presidents fight for attention the way pop stars once did, those comparisons sting because they point to reach, not just approval.

The length did not help. Trump's speech ran for 1 hour and 47 minutes, and OK! says it was the longest State of the Union address on record, surpassing Bill Clinton's 2000 mark of 1 hour and 28 minutes. An address that long can feel less like a constitutional ritual and more like a test of endurance, especially for viewers already weary of political performance.

Even in the fragmented world of cable, one part of the landscape looked predictable. Fox News led all networks with 9.1 million viewers, OK! reports. That kind of dominance tells you where the most loyal audience still lives, and where persuadable viewers do not.

Then there is the softer metric that politicians hate because it is harder to spin. OK! says only 38 per cent of viewers had a 'very positive' reaction, which it describes as the lowest among Trump's five major addresses to Congress. It is the sort of number that makes a victory lap look premature, even for a president who rarely resists one.

Donald Trump And A Chamber That Would Not Play Along

The fallout was not confined to Nielsen charts. OK! reports that roughly half of House and Senate Democrats skipped the event as part of a coordinated boycott, alongside a rally on the National Mall organised by MoveOn and MeidasTouch, featuring Senators Chris Murphy, Tina Smith and Chris Van Hollen. Inside the chamber, not every Democratic leader stayed away, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer attending, and OK! reporting that Jeffries advised members either to skip or to remain in 'silent defiance.'

If 'silent defiance' was the instruction, it did not hold for everyone. OK! says Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib heckled Trump during the speech. During Trump's defence of his immigration policies and his call to end 'sanctuary cities,' Omar repeatedly shouted, 'You have killed Americans!,' the outlet reports. OK! adds that Omar later said on social media she was referring to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, described as constituents, during ICE enforcement actions.

Trump's reply, delivered afterwards on Truth Social, was characteristically incendiary and intensely personal. OK! quotes him writing that Omar and Tlaib 'screamed uncontrollably' and had 'the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalised.' The president's defenders would call it counterpunching, his critics would call it something uglier, but either way it underscored how quickly a formal address can collapse back into the culture-war language that now defines so much of American politics.

Senator Mark Kelly, who OK! says remained stone-faced during the speech, accused Trump of using the address to 'further divide us as a nation' and described the tone as 'angry'. That assessment was echoed, in harsher terms, by commentary OK! cites from across the press.

Donald Trump Versus The Reviews

OK! reports that The Guardian said the president 'had run out of steam' and that Axios characterised the address as a 'rose-colored spectacle' that did not align with public concerns about affordability, inflation and immigration. The outlet also states that critics noted Trump touted a 'Golden Age' even as 65 per cent of Americans disapproved of his handling of inflation. Those are not small gaps to bridge, and no amount of ceremony in the House chamber can cover them for long.

The knives, unsurprisingly, were out among columnists too. OK! says multiple New York Times columnists criticised the speech, with Jamelle Bouie citing 'braying racism' and Elizabeth Williamson calling it a 'tedious, tiresome performance.' The Daily Beast went further, OK! reports, branding it a 'craven, meandering, mean-spirited flop' that felt more like a game show than a report to Congress. And OK! says The New Republic referred to Trump as a 'malicious buffoon' and called the administration an 'affront to everything we have... as Americans.'