Donald Trump's Tucker Carlson Interview Garnered LESS Viewers Than Fox News GOP Debate: Report
The GOP debate managed to surpass ratings expectations for Fox News despite Donald Trump's absence.
Aug. 25 2023, Published 3:00 p.m. ET
The recent GOP debate hosted by Fox News reportedly managed to surpass ratings expectations for the conservative news network despite the absence of former President Donald Trump, RadarOnline.com has learned.
As this outlet previously reported, Trump opted for an interview with fired Fox star Tucker Carlson instead of participating in the first GOP debate of the 2024 election cycle.
Trump claimed his interview with Carlson on Wednesday night had "231,000,000 Views" and was the “Biggest Video on Social Media, EVER, more than double the Super Bowl!"
The 46-minute Trump-Carlson interview was released on X – the social media platform formerly known as Twitter – just minutes before the debate began.
Trump and his allies boasted about the supposed “record-breaking” views, claiming it had "231,000,000 Views" and was the “Biggest Video on Social Media, EVER, more than double the Super Bowl!"
Trump’s surrogates even referenced a right-wing blog that claimed the Trump-Carlson interview on Wednesday garnered more viewers than the 90 million viewers that the Oprah Winfrey-Michael Jackson interview pulled in at Neverland Ranch in 1993.
However, those claims were reportedly centered around the Twitter "views" metric – known to be “unreliable” and not “accurately” reflecting actual viewership.
Other sources debunked Trump and Carlson's ratings claims.
According to Mediaite, the Twitter "views" metric counts anyone who views a tweet – whether for a fraction of a second or by scrolling past it multiple times – as one view.
It reportedly does not differentiate between those who actually watched the video and those who merely scrolled past it briefly.
Furthermore, the calculations made by some media outlets mistakenly used the video view metric instead of the tweet view metric – something that reportedly "inflated" the numbers further.
Contrary to the exaggerated claims, the actual viewership numbers reportedly told a different story.
According to Mediaite, the Twitter "views" metric does not differentiate between those who actually watched the video and those who merely scrolled past it briefly.
The Fox News debate drew 12.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen, which measures the average concurrent viewers of a program.
However, this number apparently does not represent the total viewership, as the cumulative viewership for the first quarter of 2023 showed that Fox News drew a total audience of 63 million.
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Therefore, the Trump-Carlson interview was likely watched by far fewer people than the Fox News debate.
The Fox News debate, despite lacking the presence of Trump, managed to exceed ratings expectations for the Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative news network.
The Fox News debate drew 12.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
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As RadarOnline.com reported, Trump was also mocked after his interview with Carlson on Wednesday night over the ex-president’s remarks about President Joe Biden’s “skinny legs.”
“You look at [Biden], who can't walk through the helicopter, he walks, he can't lift his feet out of the grass, you know, it's only two inches at the White House,” Trump said during the interview.
“You watch him and it looks like he's walking on toothpicks,” the embattled ex-president ridiculed Biden further. “And then you see him on the beach where he can't lift a chair. You know, those chairs are meant to be light, right? Like two ounces.”
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