Rep. Dan Crenshaw tried to attack Sen. Elizabeth Warren by claiming that half of Americans watch Fox, which is not true.
Rep. Crenshaw (R-TX) tweeted at Warren:
Why do you have such contempt for half of America?
Labeling and insulting the other side as full of “racism and hate†is a cheap attempt to undermine ideas so that you don’t have to actually confront them. It is an intellectually void strategy. https://t.co/3Lubg4dEH4
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— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) May 15, 2019
How Many Americans Watch Fox News?
The truth is that Fox News’s viewership is tiny. As Politico noted, “Fox’s minimal influence is easily explained. While it’s the most popular cable news network, it still draws only a niche audience. Socolow provides the numbers: On an average night, about 2.4 million prime-time viewers tune in, which is about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population.”
As Fox has become more amplified by Trump, their already outsized media influence has only grown bigger. For the sake of comparison, Twitter usage, at roughly 2% of Americans, is nearly three times more people than the Fox News audience.
Rep. Crenshaw assumed that every single Trump voter in the country watches Fox News, which is the kind of false belief that has led the Republican Party to cater to a small niche audience instead of appealing to the rest of the country.
Sen. Warren was correct to turn down Fox and blister them in the process.
As Republicans cater to the fringe Fox audience, they lose the rest of the country, as 99% of America is not watching Fox News.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
