CNN thought they’d pull in some massive ratings this week by holding a Republican Party primary debate with the remaining candidates — minus former President Donald Trump — especially considering the vast majority of the topics would be focused on “women’s issues,” but that turned out not to be the case. Folks don’t seem to be too interested in hearing what former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has to say about, well, anything.
The proof is in the pudding.
A town hall event with Trump was held at the same time as the debate over on Fox News and it completely crushed the debate in ratings. It was pure annihilation. This isn’t surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the presidential polling that’s been conducted ever since Trump first announced he would be running for president again. He’s enjoyed a massive, steady lead over his competition from the very beginning. And the amount of viewers his event on Fox drew in is proof that he’s still an intriguing figure to the American people.
Check out The Western Journal’s report below:
The town hall, which aired live on Fox News in prime time on Wednesday, was watched by 4.3 million people, the Nielsen company said. The CNN debate, which aired live at the same time, was seen by just under 2.6 million.
Fox said the Trump campaign asked that the town hall go head-to-head on TV against CNN’s debate at 9 p.m. Eastern as a condition of the former president’s appearance. Both events took place in Des Moines, Iowa, in advance of Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Trump has not participated in any of the organized debates between GOP 2024 presidential candidates.
Fox said Trump’s town hall got an additional 1.4 million viewers when reruns were aired at midnight Eastern time and in the middle of the night.
Another factor to take into consideration when looking at the ratings numbers is that Fox News has a much higher viewing audience than CNN in general, so it’s to be expected they would be pulling in better numbers than the GOP debate. Add to that the fact we already know where the remaining candidates stand on the main issues of the day, so it seems sort of pointless to keep beating a dead horse and holding these events.
One very interesting bit of information Trump revealed during the event was that he has already chosen who he wants to be his running mate should he win the nomination, though he wouldn’t give any clues as to who it might be.
“I can’t tell you that, really, I mean, I know who it’s going to be,” Trump said when he was asked if he already had someone in mind for his VP pick.
“We’ll do another show sometime,” Trump responded when host MacCallum pressed him to “give us a hint.”
A lot of folks have been tossing around the possibility of his pick being pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy or South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem. At this point, it could be just about anyone.
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