Whether viewers watched the veterans benefit or the Republican debate, it was Trump who won the war of social media.
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‘And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly and Ben, you’re a bad surgeon. Roe named 2,807 torn between Cruz and Rubio, 3,185 split between Cruz and Ben Carson, and 9,131 between Cruz and Trump. Then he thanked his fellow candidates for showing Iowa voters respect by turning up.
Jeb Bush, who has been increasingly argumentative with Mr Trump during the debates, joked that he wished Trump was there.
“When you’re treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights”, he said, referring to his row with Fox.
“We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we’re being mistreated”, he told the rally.
However, Fox News in a statement said the network’s CEO Roger Ailes had “three brief conversations” with Trump, where he “acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on (anchor) Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further”.
Fox News reported Thursday night that Trump offered to join the debate in progress in exchange for a $5 million donation to his charity.
At the debate, Cruz came out swinging against Trump in his initial comments, mocking the tycoon’s penchant for brash criticism. “But they want me there”.
“If we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba”. “They called a few minutes ago”.
Rick Santorum, who took part in the undercard debate, also took the liberty of criticizing the network for downplaying coverage of his campaign, being too obsessed with Trump and ignoring substantive issues.
The candidates largely sidestepped direct confrontations with each other, focusing some of their most pointed attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. The paper endorsed his rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie previous year, and he railed against its publisher Joe McQuaid “a bad person”, “incompetent”, “a psycho”, and an “ant”. “He also needs Republicans who support Fox News”.
Speaking from the stage at what felt like a cross between a televised fundraising telethon and a typical Trump campaign rally, Trump said his foundation already had raised between $5 million and $6 million for veterans since announcing the event.
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Ted Cruz’s campaign had $19 million in the bank as of December 31, campaign manager Jeff Roe told reporters on Friday at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast briefing in Des Moines, Iowa. That debate had an audience of around 25 million viewers, so approximately double Thursday night’s viewership.
