Analysis by Summer Lane
Since last Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s success appearing on Tucker Carlson’s new show on X has dominated the headlines and stolen the spotlight from the first GOP presidential primary debate.
Trump’s interview with Carlson posted online just five minutes before the scheduled debate on Fox News, strategically aimed at stealing viewers away from presidential candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
According to CBS, 12.8 million people tuned in to see the first GOP debate of the 2024 election cycle, a number that Trump recently lambasted as “one of the lowest rated EVER” in the history of the presidential debates.
“The debate on Fox News had a hard time with the proverbial ratings,” Trump remarked in a video this week. “…It was one of the lowest ever rated in terms of debates if not THE lowest. It showed that many of those participating are second tier.”
By contrast, Trump’s online interview with Tucker Carlson has racked up a serious view count. When it aired last Wednesday night, it accrued tens of millions of views on X in a matter of minutes. In just one week, the video has earned a whopping 263 million views.
Trump noted this week, “Wow! My interview with Tucker Carlson has turned out to be the single most watched Video and Interview in the HISTORY of the world, I guess! Such a great honor to have participated.”
He pointed out that this “more than” doubled Oprah Winfrey’s famous interview with Michael Jackson decades ago, which accrued 62.3 million views when it aired on television in 1993.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Andrew Tate earlier this year racked up an impressive 107 million views, but Trump’s interview has far and away surpassed even that staggering viewership.
It appears that on view count numbers alone, Trump’s interview has become the most-viewed conversation of all time, and the video’s rapid dissemination online has forever changed the way that media and information is shared worldwide.
In his video, Trump said he wanted to “congratulate Tucker” and thank everyone for the success of his interview.
