Tammy Bruce: February 2020 will be known as the month when President Trump was reelected
Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce reacts to the Iowa caucus results and Trump’s impeachment acquittal on ‘Fox and Friends.’
Editor's note: The following column originally appeared in The Washington Times.
February 2020 will forever be known not only as the month when President Trump was reelected, but why that happened. Signs were everywhere that the American people had grown tired of being held in contempt by the self-satisfied political and cultural glitterati. For those still nursing their rage at Mr. Trump and his supporters, their very, very bad month has coughed up another reminder that they’re no longer admired or influential, and they have only themselves to blame.
Once again, Hollywood gathered on Sunday for the Oscar ceremony, their annual ritual of back-slapping and self-congratulations. And then the ratings came in. For anyone in Hollywood or the entertainment industry who remained confident that America still cared, they had another thing coming.
The New York Times headline blared, “2020 Oscars Broadcast Hit New Ratings Low …,” reporting a collapse of 20 percent in total viewers compared to last year and a shocking 31 percent drop among what’s considered the preferred “demo” age group of 25-54. In other words, it was the lowest ratings they received of all-time with 26.3 million viewers or about 6 million fewer than last year.
For perspective, at the 2014 Oscars telecast, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres and one year prior to Hollywood being consumed by its pathological hatred for Mr. Trump and his supporters, 43.7 million people tuned in.
The New York Times’ sub-headline expressed the continued delusion of our imagined cultural gatekeepers as they clutched their pearls wondering what could be responsible for the meltdown: “Many television viewers tuned out the 92nd Academy Awards show. Was it the 40 minutes of commercials? A crowded TV season? The lack of a host?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was angry leprechauns, or one of those black holes CNN’s Don Lemon worries about sucking in missing jetliners. Perhaps they kidnap television viewers?
Instead, it was something more earth-bound impacting the ratings: The lack of a desire by the normals to be subjected to what immediately became another three hours of the woke lecturing by the rich and smug. Attacks on Mr. Trump are expected, but the night’s sanctimony was targeting those the new Hollywood has always held in contempt — their own audience.
Ricky Gervais, the liberal and very incorrect comedian, writer, producer and host of last year’s Golden Globe Awards, chimed in with a very timely reminder. Fox News reported him tweeting: “I have nothing against the most famous people in the world using their privileged, global platform to tell the world what they believe. I even agree with most of it. I just tried to warn them that when they lecture everyday, hard-working people, it has the opposite effect. Peace.”
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Piers Morgan was even more direct in his Daily Mail column. “It took all of ten seconds for the first winner at last night’s Oscars to unleash an angry political statement against President Trump. Frankly, I’m only surprised it took that long,” he wrote.
“Hollywood despises Trump with a volcanic passion despite many of its own leading lights representing exactly the same kind of ruthless, venal, self-aggrandizing, duplicitous, charlatan, narcissistic and hypocritical character traits they profess to most hate in him. But shameless hypocrisy and chronic lack of self-awareness seem to go hand in hand with being a movie star these days.”
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And it’s not just the Oscars that have experienced an abandonment by their own audience. In September, last year’s Emmy Awards for the television programs and performers also suffered a remarkable drop in viewership. The broadcast “fell by 32 percent in viewers and 29 percent in adults 18-49 from the previous year,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
These ratings should be a gift to celebrities and their politician goodfellas, alerting them to what the American public thinks of them. For normal people, it would be a wakeup call, but it’s not. They follow weeks of a chaotic unraveling of an establishment system so wrapped up in itself and their hatred that they can’t see beyond it.
This was a month that started with a CNN panel led by Mr. Lemon and GOP strategists mocking Trump voters as idiot rubes as they laughed hysterically. Then came the catastrophe of the Iowa caucuses. It wasn’t a failure of just incompetent vote counting. Less covered was another collapse of interest — 170,000 Democrats turned out to caucus in Iowa. In 2008, it was 240,000.
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Then came Mr. Trump’s successful State of the Union address, and then the impeachment acquittal in the Senate. These events, combined with continued good economic news, and the president’s focus on the issues, has illustrated for the American people a clarity about what our choices are — do we embrace a vision of peace, prosperity and unity all brought about with a foundation of respect for the American people, or do we choose a group of people who hold normals in abject contempt?
Ratings of award shows tell a story of who and what America is choosing — and the establishment will get an undeniable confirmation of that on Nov. 3.