According to preliminary Nielsen data, 12.5 million people watched the Republican face-off, beating only an earlier debate on the less-prominent Fox Business Network. All the usual suspects were there, except Donald Trump.
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Megachurch Pastor Perry Noble says that while he’s not endorsing Trump, he does feel the businessman successfully turned the tables on the Fox News network that hosted the Republican debate Thursday night in Iowa.
At the same time, Trump was able to control the news cycle with his public beef with Fox News, as well as the counterprogramming with his veterans fundraiser. In a somewhat drastic overstatement, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, had said the ratings number for the Fox News debate, without Mr. Trump, would drop to “one to two million people”.
And during his absence, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly allegedly called him “Voldemort”. Apparently, not so much. Ted Cruz was about “the elephant not in the room” and what Trump was saying to Iowa by not attending the debate like the good boys all had.
Trump and Kelly have had an ongoing feud since the first GOP debate in August past year during which Kelly confronted the controversial candidate about his disparaging remarks about women, calling them “fat pigs”, “dogs”, and “slobs”. The Donald got more than 67,900 likes on a single Facebook post announcing his event had raised millions, according to Engagement Labs, a social media marketing company.
Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier hit back at Trump in a statement Friday, knocking the NY billionaire’s past support for legal abortion and praiseworthy comments about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Well, you know, you were joking just before we went on air that it was sort of like Voldemort, he who must not be named”, Cruz, 45, reportedly said to her afterward. Ted Cruz, Trump’s prime competitor in Iowa, if polling is to be believed. “I did the right thing, and I know I did the right thing because we were raising money for veterans”.
A clip from 2011 features Trump fawning over the host after she asks him if he could moderate better than her: “No, I could never beat you”.
“He got beaten up pretty badly last night”, Trump added. “But I’ll tell you what, they weren’t treating me right”. Cruz’s next sentence began: “Now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way”.
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Trump also trended on Twitter. In 2016, Donald said, “I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly”.
