Fox News debate without Trump actually got better ratings than the last one

Donald Trump’s latest move, skipping Thursday night’s GOP debate due to his apparent fear of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, may have not had as much of an impact as Trump predicted, as it actually had higher ratings than the last debate with Donald Trump.

Thursday night’s debate had 12.5 million viewers, according to the Neilson ratings. Trump’s parallel press conference was broadcast on CNN and MSNBC, where it was seen by a combined 2.7 viewers. The actual numbers are far off from Trump’s tweets that predicted terrible ratings for the broadcast.

The 12.5 million who tuned in last night is actually more than the Fox Business Network debate from two weeks ago, which had 10 million viewers. However, the drop in numbers may be because Fox Business is less available and harder to find on cable networks.

Despite his incorrect predictions, Trump played off his defeat as a victory. Trump claimed that if he was present, the event would have had the highest debate ratings ever, breaking the record held by the August 2015 Fox News debate. Fox was not expecting to break any records with the final debate, even if Trump attended.

Trump’s move was an attempt to send a message to the media to convince them to cater to his demands, or else he would walk and the ratings would follow. By standing up to Trump, Fox News did the near impossible and actually had liberals on their side.

[The Weekly Standard

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *