The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

The inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States was a historic event. The question on everyone's mind is how many people watched it on television.

CNN set live TV ratings records during President Donald Trump's inauguration, with nearly 37 million viewers tuning in at some point during the ceremony and speech, according to Nielsen data released Monday. Fox News Channel had 11.8 million viewers and MSNBC had 4.9 million viewers; both also drew their largest ever daytime audiences for an inauguration..

In context, Barack Obama's second inauguration was seen by 20.6 million people in 2009 - down from his first in 2009 which netted 37.8 million. Trump's preliminary audience was also better than Barack Obama's second inauguration. (Note: Nielsen does not measure viewership for web-based streams.)

While the audience for Trump's inauguration dwarfs the numbers for any of President Barack Obama's inaugurations, viewers will have to wait until January 20 to see the presidential address that presidents used to deliver from their Inauguration Day parade.

That was the case with Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 as well, whose inaugural address was given on Jan. 22, two days after his swearing in as president. It wasn't until 1983 that Johnson (and Franklin D. Roosevelt) gave their first inaugural addresses on a weekday - Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday - instead of a Sunday in January.

 

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The final number TV viewers that watchedDonald Trump's inauguration is likely to be even higher. Viewership numbers are likely inflated by live streams through various apps and websites, including YouTube.Donald Trump's supporters and detractors remain sharply divided over whether he has done a good job so far as president, but they share one common refrain: The man is a lousy communicator and should talk less at his news conferences.

In a new Washington Times/JZ Analytics online poll released Tuesday, only 9 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the November election said he has explained his policies well so far. But more than four times that many — 40 percent of the president's voters — said they expected him to do better in explaining them later.Thirty-eight percent of all respondents said Mr. Trump is not credible, and 10 percent had no opinion.

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The poll surveyed 1,000 likely U.S. voters last week and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. It was conducted by the public relations firm JZ Analytics for The Washington Times with results released Monday night amid Mr. Trump's first news conference in six months.

"The numbers speak for themselves, and I don't think he communicated well," said Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy President Brad Coker, who conducted the poll with JZ Analytics.

Other polls have shown Mr. Trump with historically low approval ratings for a president this early in his first term. The latest Gallup Poll released Tuesday found just 45 percent of Americans approve of the way Mr. Trump is handling his job, while 50 percent disapprove. Four years ago when Gallup asked the same question at President Obama's sixth month in office, 73 percent of Americans approved — including 59 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats — compared to just 17 percent who didn't like Mr.