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Former President Donald Trump's decision to participate in an interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson rather than attend the Republican primary election drew substantial attention on social media Wednesday night.
Trump's interview with Carlson, who left Fox News earlier this year, garnered 100 million views on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as his Republican rivals challenged each other during the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on a range of issues from abortion, the Russia-Ukraine war to the economy.
The former president opted to not participate in the Republican debate, pointing to his poll numbers that show him with a substantial lead over his challengers. In the weeks leading up to the debate, he questioned why a candidate with such a lead would debate his rivals. FiveThirtyEight's polling aggregate shows him with a nearly 38-point lead over his second-place rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The X metric only measures the number of people who saw the post, even fleetingly. It does not measure how many actually watched the interview, or how long it was watched, with platform owner Elon Musk having removed the ability to measure video views earlier this year.
Still, the interview, which aired on X at the same time the other candidates took the stage, quickly became Carlson's most-watched interview.
His interview with social media personality and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate was previously Carlson's most-viewed interview at 107 million views since it was posted on July 11. The Trump interview had reached 100 million views by 1 a.m. ET, only four hours after it was posted.
The video has also been liked more than 438,000 times and reposted more than 124,000 times, as of the same time.
Trump touted the view count in a post made to Truth Social, writing, "Looks like the Tucker Carlson interview will end up with an 'over 100 Million' number. Wow!"
Meanwhile, Carlson's interview with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the only other presidential candidate who has sat down with Carlson, has been viewed about 44 million times since it was posted on August 11.
During the interview with Carlson, Trump explained that he skipped the debate because he believed he would have been "harassed" by candidates who "shouldn't even been running for president" if he participated.
"I'm leading by 50 and 60 points," Trump said. "And I'm saying, 'Do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it's going to be, and get harassed by people that shouldn't even be running for president?"
He also took aim at some of his Republican rivals, including saying that DeSantis is "gone-zo" and that he was "very disappointed" in former Vice President Mike Pence.
Meanwhile, Trump remained a topic of conversation during the GOP debate, despite his absence. Fox host Bret Baier, who moderated the debate alongside Martha MacCallum, described him as "the elephant not in the room."
The network dedicated a segment to Trump's legal woes, as the former president is set to surrender to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Thursday after he was indicted in her investigation into alleged election interference attempts. Candidates sparred about whether the GOP should continue embracing Trump.
"Whether or not that you believe the criminal charges are wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States," former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, prompting boos from the audience.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, on the other hand, accused Christie of basing his campaign "on vengeance and grievance against one man."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign for comment via email
About the writer
Andrew Stanton is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in Maine. His role is reporting on U.S. politics and social issues. ... Read more