The “ratings” are a little bit tepid
Trump is bragging about his unprecedented numbers on Tucker’s Xitter show last night saying that it got over a hundred million viewers. That’s not true. “Views” on the platform are recorded as anyone who may have scrolled past it , not how many people actually saw it much less watched it. Here are the more pertinent numbers:
As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter.
But these days, Fox averages about 1.7 million viewers during its primetime broadcast. And notice the specificity of the word “viewers.” Because none of the numbers tracking engagement on a X post tell you if someone actually watched the video.
We have no idea how many people sat through the whole 45-minute interview between the former president who has been indicted four times, and the man who used to host what the New York Times declared to be “the most racist show in the history of cable news.” It’s impossible to draw any conclusion whatsoever. But if we assume engagement is a likelier means of getting an accurate count than passive “views,” the interview almost certainly did not end up “overshadowing all of Television programming on Wednesday night,” even if ratings were halved by Trump’s absence, as Brian Stelter predicted.
There are plenty of posts that get far more engagement than that. Look any big celebrity for instance. I’m sure a lot more people watched the debate. Luckily for Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy represented.