Further, if Fox was selling ads with a promise of anything bigger than 12 million, which I imagine it was, it will probably have to provide advertising time free of charge to make up the difference.
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Speculating on what skipping the last debate before the Iowa Caucuses might mean for his presidential aspirations, Trump admitted he wasn’t sure, but didn’t seem very anxious.
The smoke has cleared from Thursday night’s televised showdown between Donald Trump and the FOX News Republican debate, which he refused to attend. Trump boycotted the event over Fox’s use of Megyn Kelly as a moderator.
Moderator Megyn Kelly, who has been feuding with Trump since the first debate last summer, dubbed the frontrunner “the elephant not in the room” at the start of the Des Moines showdown.
Despite the Trump event’s lousy viewership, his ratings prophecy was at least partially correct: The Thursday night debate was the second-lowest rated this season.
The Kelly File host and Trump have been in a longtime feud, which ultimately led him to opt out of the debate, instead choosing to address a veterans’ rally at nearby Drake University where he raised money for Wounded Warriors.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is locked in a tight contest with Trump in Iowa, opened the debate with a sarcastic impression of the real estate mogul’s frequent insults of his opponents.
Republican candidates, left to right, Kentucky Sen.
On the other hand, Trump’s Thursday Iowa rally – broadcast in part on MSNBC and CNN – drew in less than a quarter of the audience watching the debate, early Nielsen numbers show. “And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly and Ben (Carson), you’re a bad surgeon”.
Astonishingly, after the initial jabs and quips thrown in Donald’s direction, the debate went smoothly, and no one mentioned Trump much after that.
In the first clip, Trump trashes Ted Cruz as a “nasty guy” whom “nobody likes”.
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The business tycoon also dominated talk on Twitter. The cable news network performed just fine in the Nielsens on Thursday night. Overall, ratings for prime-time Republican debates – fueled by Trump’s popularity and unpredictability – have been three to four times higher than they were in 2011.
