<P> It was announced on January 26, 2018, that Maxine Waters would be on the BET program, Angela Rye's State of the Union, after the State of the Union Address to address the country . On January 29, the office of Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, announced that he would be giving his own response to the address . Alt - right figures supported the Speech . </P> <P> The State of the Union Address was televised on all the major U.S. broadcast and cable television networks . Facebook and Twitter streamed the address online . Nine media outlets (ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Telemundo, Univision, and C - SPAN) and the White House will provide ten separate livestreams of the address on YouTube . </P> <P> On January 24, NBC News announced that it would begin its coverage of the address at 9 pm EST, with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt leading it . Holt was joined by Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, Megyn Kelly Today anchor Megyn Kelly, special correspondent Tom Brokaw, and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell . Starting at 8 pm EST, NBC News will also be livestreaming the event on YouTube and NBCNews.com with national political correspondent Steve Kornacki and correspondent Katy Tur . On January 26, CBS News announced it was beginning its coverage at 9 pm EST, but CBSN would start streaming its coverage of the event at 5 pm EST . CNN stated that that it would start its coverage at 7 pm EST and stream on CNNgo . Fox News announced on January 28 that it would begin coverage at 9 pm EST with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum . </P> <P> Across twelve broadcast and cable television networks, 45.8 million viewers watched the speech . The address was the most - tweeted of its kind with a record total of 4.5 million tweets, surpassing the former record of 3 million tweets, set during Trump's 2017 joint session address--which was broken less than an hour into the 2018 address . </P>

Who was at state of the union 2018