Trump-less Debate Gets Half the Viewers of ’15

The first Republican primary debate got only about half of former President Donald Trump’s first GOP debate appearance in 2015.

An estimated 12.8 million people watched the first Republican presidential primary debate, was a only little more than half the 24 million people who watched Trump appear in his first presidential debate in August 2015, the Nielsen company said.

The Trump effect was seen in a January 2016 GOP candidates debate that Trump also skipped and was seen by 12.5 million people.

X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, said late Thursday afternoon that the tweet of Tucker Carlson’s interview show had 236.7 million views – a count of how many times someone scrolled by Carlson’s interview with Trump in their feeds.

If you happened to scroll by the post a dozen different times, that counts as a dozen views.

Public interaction numbers were smaller: There were some 55,000 comments attached to the interview, with about 200,000 people saying they liked it.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.