Is Trump losing popularity? His Newsmax appearance and diving Google search numbers aren't good signs: Journo
“Trump’s grip on our attention has collapsed,” wrote Philip Bump, a national correspondent for the Washington Post after former President Donald Trump's appearance on Newsmax on April 6, Tuesday. Trump, more than any other politician, has managed to grab headlines after headlines during his presidency — in fact, right from the moment he decided to run for office. But has that changed for the twice-impeached former president?
Last month, CNN reported that Newsmax TV which had gained a lot of attention in 2020 when disaffected Fox News fans flocked to the channel en masse, no longer had the Nielsen ratings it once enjoyed. While in the immediate aftermath of the election Newsmax's ratings surged, its audience has since lessened — to truly paltry numbers. Trump's appearance on Newsmax might not be a good sign.
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But that’s not all. In January, the Pew Research Center noted that while Joe Biden prepared to take office in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, 64 percent of voters expressed a positive opinion of his conduct. On the other side, Trump left the White House with the lowest job approval of his presidency (29 percent) and increasingly negative ratings for his post-election conduct — people believing his conduct was poor went from 54 percent in November to 62 percent in January. Trump voters, in particular, Pew Research Center noted, had grown more critical of their candidate’s post-election conduct.
Bump wrote in his Post column that Trump offered the “same pudding of rhetoric we’ve heard so often to an anchor on the far-right network Newsmax” — claims about the 2020 election being stolen.
In April 2015 Trump was reportedly searched for on Google less than one-fourth as often as Kim Kardashian. Trump appeared on television for about 144 minutes in April 2015, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer. That changed when he was in office, but as per Bump, in March 2021, most of that attention had already faded away.
“His Google search interest was lower than at any point since June 2015, as was the amount of time he was seen on cable. The networks were covering him far less, down to the point reached last year when the pandemic overtook Trump in the national attention. Besides that, the average mentions of Trump in March were back to the levels seen in November 2015,” the journalist said.
Even the core of his base, supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, seems to be in doubt. “I am so scared right now, I really feel nothing is going to happen now,” one person wrote on a Telegram channel popular with QAnon believers after Biden was sworn into office. “I’m just devastated.” A report stated that when one QAnon channel on the chat app Telegram posted a new theory that suggested Biden himself was “part of the plan,” a number of followers shifted into open rebellion: “This will never happen.” “Just stfu already!” “It’s over. It is sadly, sadly over.” “What a fraud!”