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Trump opted to appear on Fox rather than participate in the
evening’s Republican debate between presidential contenders
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, which aired for two hours on CNN,
overlapping with the town hall for one hour.
CNN said in a press release that the debate reached 6.4 million
people across CNN and the CNN Max streaming service.
Both events took place in Des Moines, capital of Iowa, where the
first Republican nominating contest will take place on Monday.
Trump’s refusal to attend any of the Republican Party debates so
far has turned them into sideshows with dwindling viewers. The
first debate in August drew 12.8 million viewers, and audiences
have declined since then.
Wednesday’s Fox News audience was bigger than the 3.3 million
viewers who watched Trump’s May 2023 live town hall on Warner
Bros Discovery-owned CNN, his first appearance on the network
since 2016.
It was also larger than Trump’s previous live town hall on Fox
Corp-owned Fox News in May 2020, which drew 3.8 million viewers,
according to Nielsen ratings data.
The town hall marked a new chapter for Trump and Rupert
Murdoch-controlled Fox. Trump has had a rocky history with the
network, one of the most powerful media forces in Republican
politics.
After enjoying a friendly relationship with Fox for years, he
began criticizing the top-watched U.S. cable network in 2020. He
did not appear on the network for months in 2022 and 2023.
Trump’s most recent appearances on Fox have been pretaped, not
live, which gave the network more control over how it could
address and present any claims that the 2020 election had been
rigged. Those claims formed the basis of two defamation lawsuits
brought by voting technology companies against Fox, including
one by Dominion Voting Systems that was settled for $787.5
million in April.
During Wednesday's town hall, Trump said he knows who he wants
for his running mate should he win the Republican nomination and
that his commitment to the NATO alliance will depend on how
Europeans treat the United States.
(Reporting by Helen Coster; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and
Jonathan Oatis)
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