(Newsweek) 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.
Above, an image shows a preview of Tucker Carlson’s interview of former US President Donald Trump scheduled to air on X (formerly Twitter) on the same night of the first Republican Presidential primary debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 23, 2023. Trump’s interview was viewed nearly 100 million times in four hours.CHRIS DELMAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
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?”
