Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said on Friday that he thinks he did a “smart thing” skipping Thursday night’s Fox News debate, in part because the network aired videos taking some of the candidates to task for their past statements.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives on stage for a campaign event at Clinton Middle School on January 30, 2016 in Clinton, Iowa. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who questioned Cruz’s “authenticity” while lamenting that other candidates were not as conservative as him.
Billionaire Trump refused to participate in the debate out of anger that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was a moderator.
The prime-time event lacked some of the heat Trump often injects into debates and instead focused largely on policy. Taking the stage before a capacity crowd at Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium, Trump announced that he’d managed to raise more than $6 million in less than 24 hours for various charities supporting veterans. A plethora of smaller outlets also televised and streamed Trump, but no further viewership data is available.
There’s only so many times you can watch, say, Ted Cruz try to explain his stance on immigration before you tune out.
Without Trump, Fox News’ audience did not approach the level of the first debate or either of the two shown a year ago on CNN (23 million viewers on September 16 and 18 million on December 15).
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.
Donald Trump snubbed an invitation to Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate. Trump mused. “But we raised over $5 million in one day!”
“I really do. I like Ted Cruz a lot”, Trump said in a clip from December, 11, 2015.
However, this debate was the second lowest-rated this election cycle, and Trump will likely try to take a bit of the credit for that.
The final Iowa pre-caucus poll from the highly regarded Bloomberg/Des Moines Register/Selzer poll finds businessman Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading in their parties’ contests.
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But let’s face it, Trump is never one to go quietly. Still, Patch said he didn’t see any “major stumbles” and that Cruz seemed to be focused more on mobilizing his base – not converting new voters.
