President Donald Trump is on a media tour in advance of next month’s midterm elections. Unfortunately for him, nobody seems to be watching.

After rarely venturing outside of the conservative ecosystem for the overwhelming majority of his presidency, Trump conducted a wide-ranging interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday.

I will be interviewed on “60 Minutes” tonight at 7:00 P.M., after NFL game. Enjoy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2018

Trump’s conversation with Lesley Stahl drew 11.7 million viewers, or as the Associated Press’ Zeke Miller noted, “just over half the audience that Stormy Daniels had on the CBS newsmagazine last spring.”


22 million people watched Daniels’ March appearance on 60 Minutes. Trump’s November 2016 interview on the show drew 20 million viewers.

To make matters worse for a president who notoriously craves media attention, even Fox News, Trump’s preferred network and news source, has lately taken to cutting away from his political rallies. Politico reports the decision is due to Trump’s low television ratings.

As he’s ramped up his rally schedule ahead of the midterms, viewership numbers for the raucous prime-time events have been roughly similar to — sometimes dipping below — Fox News’ regular programming, and the network has recently stopped airing most evening events in full.

Fox News’ move to cut back on Trump coverage has reportedly not gone unnoticed by the White House.

One senior White House official was unsure why the network would decide to cut away from presidential rallies, saying officials planned “to look into that” and wouldn’t be surprised if White House communications director Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive, was in touch with former colleagues about the trend.

Shine was ousted from Fox News for mishandling numerous sexual harassment complaints.

Trump remains deeply unpopular as Democrats aim to regain control of Congress in next month’s midterms.