Did Trump and Carlson's interview upend presidential primary debate?

"Are you worried that they are going to try to kill you?" former Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked former President Donald Trump in reference to how eight Republican presidential opponents might take advantage of his absence from Wednesday night's debate stage.

Trump didn't directly answer that question.

Instead, he spoke of rigged elections, his priorities if elected, why he didn't attend the debate and his belief that Biden wouldn't “make it” for the November election.

Trump's 46-minute, pre-taped interview was aired on X, formerly Twitter, just before the Fox News televised debate began. Entering the interview, Trump, despite being a three-time presidential candidate with four indictments, was leading fellow GOP candidates by wide margins, with some polls showing him 30- to 40-plus points ahead of his closest rivals.

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That's why he didn't go to the Republican National Committee's debate, he previously said.

"We'll get better ratings using this crazy forum that you're using than probably the debate," Trump said in the interview.

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By 10 p.m. Wednesday, Trump's sitdown with Carlson had about 75.4 million views, which are measured by either a viewer watching at least two seconds or interacting with the video. Fox News has not yet released numbers on how many viewers watched the presidential primary debate, yet the cable news network averages about 2.2 million primetime viewers on weekday evenings between 9 and 10 p.m.

Although trending numbers change frequently, as of 7:15 a.m. Thursday, the hashtag "GOPDebate" was the top trending search on X with 271 posts. The hashtag "TrumpandTucker was seventh, with 8,533 posts.

Trump's decision to skip the debate was not surprising. The Republican National Committee's debate's condition that all candidates agree to support the party's nominee was a stumbling block for Trump, who famously did not agree to do so in the GOP debate in 2015.

Trump's flinty relationship with Fox News, which moderated and televised the debate, was another factor. The network's on-air personalities continue to show him favor but they have also upset Trump with supportive messaging for other GOP candidates.

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The Trump-Fox discord fueled an alliance between Carlson and Trump. The far-right former president and far-right commentator both have a bone to pick with Fox News as the network earlier this year ousted Carlson, who had a top-rated primetime show, following the network's costly and embarrassing $787.5 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.

Trump teased the prerecorded interview with Carlson in a Truth Social post early Wednesday writing: "Sparks will fly."

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"It's debate night but we're not in Milwaukee," Carlson said, opening his interview with Trump.

Instead, Trump was at his home in Bedminster, New Jersey, and his interview aired on Tucker Carlson's page on X.

Trump's first comments included why he wasn't at the debate, saying that he didn't see the point since he was leading by wide margins. He also threw jabs at Fox News, saying it has lost credibility and is "way down." He noted that Fox News parting ways with Carlson was a "terrible move."

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Trump answered other questions, saying he believed that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide, talking about rigged elections and criticizing Biden's administration, including saying he didn't believe Biden would "make it" to next November's general election.

In response to Carlson's question about what his top campaign priority would be, Trump said it would be to seal the border with Mexico, "taking hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country and getting them out and bringing them back to their country."

An unexpected alliance given Carlson's tweets about Trump

Trump and Carlson in the same room, talking, is significant in itself.

In a series of text messages revealed earlier this year during discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, Carlson showed contempt for Trump, even writing in one missive that he "passionately" hated Trump. Another text shown from this lawsuit came in November 2020 when Fox News called Arizona for Biden, and Carlson texted regarding Trump's business ventures, "All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that."

On top of it, Carlson expressed a desire to move on from Trump on his network show.

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"We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait," Carlson wrote in a text, two days before the Jan. 6 attacks.

Ultimately, the question is whether the Trump-Carlson interview succeeded in siphoning viewers and attention from the GOP debate in Milwaukee. X, the Elon Musk-owned social media platform, said it has about 541 million daily active users as of the end of July.

When was the last time Trump did an interview with Carlson?

The last time the two conservative stars had an interview was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in April, just after Trump was first indicted in relation to alleged hush money payments made to an adult film star, and just before Carlson separated from Fox News.

In that interview, Carlson sat silently as Trump rambled on repeatedly as Carlson did not interject with him, or offer probing or challenging questions or comments. As he most often does, Trump spoke of "hoax" investigations against him.

Stephany Matat is a politics reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY-Florida network. Reach her at smatat@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump and Carlson interview sought to upend presidential primary debate