U.S. Strikes Against Iran Drive Visits Feb. 28, as Truth Social Soars
Every right-wing news website tracked by TheRighting experienced significant declines in February traffic according to TheRighting’s exclusive analysis of mobile and desktop traffic based on Similarweb data. Even fast-growing right-wing stalwarts like Truth Social saw year-over-year (YOY) declines. The Trump-controlled social platform attracted 18.4 million visits in February 2026, compared to 25.2 million visits in February 2025, for a 27% drop.
“One reason for the falloff was that the news environment in February 2025 was much more robust than February 2026,” said Howard Polskin, President, TheRighting. “February 2025 was marked by President Trump’s confusing tariff announcements, the contentious confirmation of Robert Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of HHS, and the confrontation between Trump and Vladimir Zelensky at the White House. February 2026 has been much quieter compared to a 13 months ago. I expect traffic to rebound in March because of intense interest in the war again Iran.”
The three mainstream news websites TheRighting tracks on a monthly basis, all saw YOY audience decreases: The NY Times (-6%), CNN (-14%), and the Washington Post (-34%).
YOY Losers Among Top 20 Right-Wing News Websites, February 2026 (there were no winners)
(by percentage decrease of visits from year ago)
Losers
–Washington Times (-60%)
–Daily Wire (-51%)
–The Federalist (-48%)
U.S. Strikes Against Iran Boost Visits February 28
The early morning strikes against Iran on February 28 increased traffic considerably for most news websites on both sides of the political spectrum. The Trump-controlled Truth Social led all news websites in day-over-day increases improving 143% from 279,600 visits on February 27 to 682,400 visits on February 28.
Other notable day-to-day increases from February 27 to February 28:
CNN: 94% (8.5 million visits to 16.5 million visits)
Fox News: 59% (6.4 million to 10.2 million)
Newsmax: 56% (555,600 to 864,900)
The NY Times: 26% (13.7 million to 17.2 million)
Washington Post: 11% (1.9 million to 2.1 million)
The Free Press: 9% (89,600 to 98,100)
A Note About Methodology
TheRighting uses data from Similarweb, the digital market intelligence company, to measure visits to websites. Until its December 2024 report, TheRighting relied on data from Comscore which measured unique visitors to websites.
