Joy Behar called Tucker Carlson “almost irrelevant” because he only has — a bigger audience than she does.
In Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” the left-wing comedian denounced Mr. Carlson on the usual terms, but then said that at least his reach isn’t that of a previous generation of rabble-rousing populists.
She cited the Rev. Charles Coughlin, a 1930s Catholic priest who also dabbled in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, as having had an audience of more than 30 million — a quarter of the national population at the time — for his weekly sermons.
“Tucker Carlson has, in a country of 326 million people, he has three million listeners … he’s almost irrelevant,” Ms. Behar said.
The bare facts are true, though that mostly reflects a much more fragmented media landscape in which the kind of ratings and shares typical of previous generations are achieved by nobody.
Especially by “The View,” conservative commentators pointed out Tuesday.
In an analysis for the Daily Wire, Tim Meads noted that in April, a time during which Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” did indeed average just over 3 million viewers per night, “‘The View’ had an average of 2.214 million viewers per day.”
“Data indicates that The View has had similar numbers measured at other times over the past year as well,” he continued.
This being the era of social media, Mr. Meads also compared the “almost irrelevant” Mr. Carlson and Ms. Behar there, and found the same result.
“‘The View’ does not even have one million followers on Twitter. Its official Twitter account has 887,843 followers. Behar has slightly more than one million followers,” he wrote.
By comparison, Mr. Carlson has more than 5 million Twitter followers.
These figures, Mr. Meads quipped, “must mean she thinks that her respective show is totally irrelevant.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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