From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Beto O'Rourke, These Are the Most Watched Political Videos on Twitter

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Texas Representative Beto O'Rourke and President Donald Trump play starring roles in some of the most-watched political videos on Twitter, new analysis shows.

While the list, compiled by video analytics company Tubular Labs, is not technically political, Trump appears to narrowly hold the top spot on the list. He claims it with a video posted in July 2017, featuring doctored footage from 2007 showing the billionaire WWE Chairman Vince McMahon with a CNN logo superimposed on McMahon's face.

The controversial video, which has garnered more than 39.1 million views to date, holds the highest number of views, according to Tubular Labs spokesperson John Cassillo. But he said Trump's "Fake News Network" wrestling meme should likely be discounted from the list of videos of "politicians," considering that the 2007 original footage was taken at least a decade before Trump entered the White House and that it "only depicts the back of his head and is more about 'beating up' CNN."

As a result, Cassillo said a recent viral video of Ocasio-Cortez using a "corruption game" to highlight the need for campaign finance reform during a House Oversight Committee hearing last week could be considered No. 1, pulling in slightly more than half a million views less than Trump's wrestling video.

The video, which was published by NowThis, has so far seen 38.4 million views and counting since it was posted on Twitter on February 7, made major waves on social media. It featured Ocasio-Cortez engaging a panel of ethics experts in a "lightning round of questions to demonstrate just how easy it is for corrupt lawmakers—and even, hypothetically, the president of the United States, to avoid accountability under the country's current government ethics laws.

According to New York Times chief metro political correspondent Shane Goldmacher, Ocasio-Cortez's "corruption game" video managed to top 21 million views in a single day.

To put that in perspective, Goldmacher said in a tweet earlier this month that within one day, the video had surpassed an "insanely viral" video also published by NowThis of Texas politician Beto O'Rourke delivering an impassioned speech praising NFL players for choosing to kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality against black people. To date, that video has hit a total of 19.9 million views on Twitter.

O'Rourke dismissed accusations from critics, including President Donald Trump, that such protests were disrespectful and unpatriotic, asserting that he could "think of nothing more American" than people demonstrating for their rights.

Among the other most-viewed political videos on Twitter were California Representative Adam Schiff's video showing him and other lawmakers holding up signs with the name of victims of gun violence in a show of demand for gun control. That video has gained 17.6 million views to date.

While Trump's CNN wrestling video may not technically count as a political video, the U.S. leader does appear on the list, which includes 10 videos, four more times, including in a video him questioning a child's belief in Santa Claus last Christmas, as well as a video the president posted to Twitter on January 21, 2017, following his inauguration, of him and first lady Melania Trump dancing at the Freedom Ball.

"Thank you for another wonderful evening in Washington, D.C.," Trump tweeted with the video, which has attracted 12.6 million views. "TOGETHER, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN."

The late Republican Senator John McCain also appears on the list, with a video of the politician, who died last August, praising his then-rival for the presidency Barack Obama as a "decent man" after a woman questioned the soon-to-become U.S. leader's background during a 2008 campaign stop. That video has garnered 13.7 million views to date.

A recent impassioned speech from Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, who hit back at Republicans last month over their role in the record-breaking partial government shutdown, also made the list.

The C-SPAN video of Bennet, who lashed out at Republican Senator Ted Cruz for shedding "crocodile tears" over the shutdown, achieved 13.6 million views.

According to Cassillo, the reason most of the videos on the list were relatively new was because "Twitter's native video is pretty young," launching on January 2015. But, he said, it "has grown significantly in recent years."

He said that Tubular Labs "measures publicly available data from leading global social video platforms and represents video performance metrics as they are calculated and presented in the platform."

Twitter has said that it cannot confirm Tubular Labs' data, as it did not directly provide it.