Republican front-runner Donald Trump skipped a presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday after a flurry of last-minute negotiations with host Fox News, holding his own rally a few miles away four days before the first nominating contest of the 2016 race.
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Trump’s success in that effort – which was aided by hard-line conservatives’ growing skepticism of Fox News – seemed to open the floodgates for Trump’s adversaries. He allowed the other candidates to shine without him, and he as much as told Iowa voters, who take their caucuses seriously and personally, that he doesn’t care about them.
Fox News earned a rating of 8.4 during the debate Thursday, which means 8.4 percent of TV households were tuned to the debate.
Fox News Channel would like you to know its GOP presidential candidates debate numbers were, well, huge! The last Republican debate on sister net Fox Business Network on January 14, was watched by 11 million viewers. Trump said. “When you’re born in Canada, you’re not supposed to run for president of the United States”.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a frequent Trump target, said: ‘I kind of miss Donald Trump; he was a teddy bear to me’.
The Trump event drew only about 2.7 million viewers.
His absence, after a dust-up with the network over Megyn Kelly’s participation as moderator of the debate, was noted at the outset, but then the candidates moved on with sharp exchanges on topics such as the best way to fight ISIS and what to do about immigration.
In the “primetime” debate, it didn’t take long for Donald Trump’s name to come up.
In the first clip, Trump trashes Ted Cruz as a “nasty guy” whom “nobody likes”.
Pew’s survey found that Republicans are watching the debates in higher percentages than Democrats or independents, and that GOP viewers are less interested in seeing candidates from the other party.
Trump says he didn’t go to the debate last night because a Fox News moderator didn’t treat him fairly in an earlier debate.
“You also have this incredible obsession with ‘terrorists.’ We can’t let them in because ‘some of them are terrorists, ‘” Welch said, denouncing it as an “indigenous” notion as it is Washington which is providing financial support for terrorists.
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“This way we made our point”, Trump added.
