On the morning of Thursday, September 10, 2026, after the first night of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The Republican Midterm Convention last night, in Dallas, was a major, sold out hit, far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible. It was really something, streaming all over the place, and really big numbers, despite going up against the NFL. The overall numbers beat the NFL.” No ratings had been released when he posted.
The numbers, once released, did not come close. CNN's Brian Stelter reported, citing Nielsen, that Trump's nearly two-hour speech averaged about 2.5 million viewers on Fox News, almost 400,000 on Newsmax and about 125,000 on NewsNation, roughly 3 million combined. The NFL's season-opening Seahawks-Patriots game averaged 25.1 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, according to NBC. On the convention's second night, Trump's shorter speech drew about 2.6 million on Fox News, while the 49ers-Rams game on Netflix averaged 18.5 million U.S. viewers. Mediaite reported that the 10 p.m. hour of Fox News coverage drew slightly fewer total viewers, 2.50 million, than Gutfeld!'s August average of 2.51 million.
“Overall numbers” is undefined and could include streams, which have no complete count. But CNN found that the most-viewed YouTube videos of the first-night speech had “only hundreds of thousands of views.” Stelter wrote, “Trump's post was written in such a way that it is hard to fact-check, even now. But all the available data indicates that the Seahawks–Patriots Super Bowl rematch was the main attraction on Wednesday night.” On Fox News, Jessica Tarlov said, “Programming against the NFL? A mistake for the TV master.”