US President Donald Trump’s boast that TV viewership for his speech to Congress this week was the “highest number in history” is under scrutiny.
Nielsen, which tracks US TV ratings, says Mr Trump’s 45.6m viewers falls short of the numbers who tuned in to other State of the Union addresses.
Nielsen says Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush all drew bigger ratings for their speeches.
Twitter said Mr Trump’s speech attracted a record 4.5m tweets.
“Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech,” Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday morning.
“45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history.”
But according to Nielsen data, Mr Obama’s first official State of the Union speech in 2010 attracted 48 million viewers.
Mr Clinton’s State of the Union pulled in a record 66.9 million television viewers in 1993.
Mr Bush pulled in 62.1 million in 2003.
