Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
A government shutdown livestream hosted by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) this week received at moments “just a few dozen viewers,” according to a new report on the “embarrassment.”
While Jeffries’ livestream “featured a rotating cast of Democratic House members and influencers,” including one person with more than 13 million followers on TikTok, it became “an almost instant joke among Republicans and a source of embarrassment among Democrats” as Jeffries struggled to pull in even a handful of viewers on Tuesday, according to Politico.
“At times, just a few dozen viewers were watching the YouTube stream,” reported Politico senior national politics correspondent Adam Wren. “Later in the evening, Democrats said some 35,000 people tuned in to watch Jeffries. But on YouTube, Democrats peaked at around 1,000 viewers.”
Jeffries’ numbers were “dwarfed” by the White House, according to Wren, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who hosted his own Senate livestream, which managed to bring in more than 90,000 viewers in real-time.
Republicans ridiculed Jeffries’ failure to attract a sizeable audience.
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung boasted on social media that the White House had been “schlonging Democrats on the viewer count.”
After the livestream dropped to just 36 viewers in the early hours of the morning, National Republican Congressional Committee war room director Ben Peterson questioned, “How many of those 36 are recording bots or reporters assigned to watch this by their editors?”
The content of the livestream was also ridiculed on social media.
At one point, a host butchered the name of Rep. Luz Rivas (D-CA), referring to her as “Congressman Luz Rivera,” while during another moment, a progressive YouTuber with more than a million followers was abruptly cut off mid-sentence by a glitchy notice which read, “We will return shortly.”
The livestream then suffered a series of major technical difficulties as four Democratic members of Congress entertained viewers by trying different pieces of candy.
The post Hakeem Jeffries’ Govt. Shutdown Livestream Receives ‘Just a Few Dozen Viewers’ first appeared on Mediaite.
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