nearly 13 million people watched the event, meaning there was significant interest in the race without Trump’s presence. While that number is far below the 24 million people who tuned into Trump’s first presidential debate in August 2015, it outpaced a January 2016 debate he skipped. (It’s also worth noting that far fewer people watch live TV than they did eight years ago, making last week’s viewership numbers even more impressive.)To counter-program the affair, Trump sat down for an online interview with Tucker Carlson, which generated little buzz.
X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, claims Carlson’s interview garnered 236.7 million views, but that’s not a reliable figure.
A “view” counts how many times people scrolled past Carlson’s show in their feeds–not how many actually stopped and watched it.
Mashable was able to see the video views (instead of tweet impressions) for the Tucker/Trump interview. It was at 14.8M as of earlier this evening.