January 28, 2020 - 2:18pm

It was always the contention of Trump supporters that an attempt to impeach the President would end up helping them: it wouldn’t ultimately succeed (which would look like another victory for him) and it would get Trump supporters riled up in time for the election.

It’s too early to tell whether it has worked out as Republicans predicted, but two datapoints will be bringing a smile to Trumpland.

Social media interactions with impeachment stories over the first three days of House hearings and Senate trial. Credit: Axios

First, the public overall are tuning out, as this new data for Axios shows (above). This is a long way from the wall to wall tabloid coverage of the Clinton impeachment (during which Bill’s approval went up anyway).

It’s a foregone conclusion and the Republican tactic of making it as boring as possible seems to be working.

Second, the most popular podcast of the moment, surpassing all the American top ten, is Ted Cruz’s daily pro-Trump coverage of the trial.

Put together, these suggest that the people being most riled up by it are Trump loyalists — which is exactly what they said all along.