Did Americans love Roseanne's pro-Trump revival? Here's what the ratings say

The ratings are in for Roseanne's revival show on the ABC television channel and they are tremendous.

Here's how well the show did

After nearly three decades since its last show, Roseanne opened to an incredible 18.1 million audience average, and 5.1 rating in the key demographic of adults aged 18 to 49.

The Hollywood Reporter said the ratings made it the "highest-rated regularly scheduled scripted show of the last few seasons."

Roseanne Barr tweeted a grateful message to her fans on Wednesday.

"I am so greatful to the fans of the Roseanne show for giving it a good Premiere rating. You are all wonderful-here is to making America laugh & talk again! LOVE U" she tweeted.

Did Trump play a role?

Pundits noted that the new show featured the main character with very pro-Trump leanings. Some attributed the high ratings at least in part to the support of the president by the title character.

Commentary editor John Podhoretz called the "astounding" ratings a "potential pop-culture earthquake" in a tweet.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro cautioned against what he said was an irrational exuberance of this interpretation, however.

"Conservatives are celebrating because they believe that Roseanne is helping to cure the culture by depicting a Trump supporter as something other than a rube or an idiot," he wrote. "There’s some truth to this: Roseanne’s character is whip-smart and unwilling to take crap from anyone — she’s sort of a female mini-Trump in terms of personality."

"But there’s something else going on in Roseanne that should disturb conservatives: the redefinition of Trump supporters as blue collar leftists rather than conservatives," he explained. "Roseanne’s character is pro-gay-marriage, pro-abortion, feminist, and pro-transgenderism — and the implication is that she is a good person because of these views. The real difference between Trump voters and Hillary voters are economic in nature, not cultural."

Here's a Washington Post video about the politics of the Roseanne revival: