President Donald Trump’s attempt to use White House resources to launch a self-promoting YouTube propaganda channel dubbed “Trump TV” has been an immediate failure.
The livestream, given the full title “Trump TV: The Essentials Station,” was launched late on Monday. It follows Trump’s recent ban of three news outlets—Politico, CNN, and MS NOW—from covering his administration, based on his complaints about the tone of their coverage. Trump has often called news coverage accurately describing his failures, falsehoods, corruption, and other failings as “fake news.”
Authoritarians throughout world history have often used state resources to create propaganda outlets while attacking independent media. This firmly puts Trump TV in the tradition of Russia’s Pravda and North Korean state TV.
But within hours of launching Trump TV, it has become crystal clear that the demand for a channel airing a constant stream of Trump speeches is not what people want to see. At the time of this story’s writing, the Trump TV stream had less than 1,800 live viewers.
For comparison, The Associated Press’ stream of world leaders’ remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday was receiving over seven times the number of live viewers at the same time.
Trump TV’s launch is also something of an insult to the right-wing Fox News Channel, which has operated for roughly 30 years as the quasi-official propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Fox has especially tied itself to Trump, whom the network helped to transform into a political figure during the former Obama administration.
Trump TV’s failure to launch was underlined by major media outlets that are part of the White House press pool to abandon coverage of Trump in protest of his ban against their colleagues. As a result, there was no audio of Trump to accompany video of him opening up his new helipad at the White House on Monday.
Despite his near-constant attacks on the free and independent press, Trump’s media-related failures over the past few days have highlighted the extent to which he has needed the press to further his message. The mainstream media’s choice to carry water for Trump has often been a boon to his political prospects, and Trump TV immediately showed that he cannot do it all on his own.
Nobody wants to watch that.
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