(USNewsMag.com) – The numbers don’t lie. As much as he built up anticipation for his campaign as a prospective challenger to former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, it appears Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is still way behind in popularity and reach compared to 45.
While all of the major Republican candidates gathered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to participate in the first GOP primary debate hosted by Fox News, Trump made a bold move and instead pre-recorded an interview with ousted former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who then premiered its release on Twitter (now known as X) at the same time as the debate.
Even though one survey immediately after the debate indicated all the candidates who took part in it may have increased their support while Trump lost support, the ratings tell a different story. Trump’s interview on Tucker on X attracted more viewers than the debate and blew DeSantis’ campaign launch in May out of the water.
On May 25, DeSantis launched his campaign on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, which had a lot of glitches due to the amount of traffic generated on the social media platform. Although the launch brought in 300,000 listeners live and 3.4 million listeners total in a day, 73.6 million people tuned in to Tucker’s conversation with Trump in the first hour. It’s now at 244 million views, and Trump doesn’t even use Twitter anymore, sticking to the platform he founded himself called Truth Social, where he’s blasted DeSantis quite a few times over the last year.
One conservative political commentator, Carl DeMaio, tweeted that people don’t “need to wait for the cable ratings tomorrow,” calling the disparity of ratings between the debate and Trump’s interview “a blowout. He said the interview “crushed the competition.”
DeSantis built up a lot of anticipation around his campaign, and his supporters have enthusiastically touted him as the only candidate with a chance at beating Trump for the GOP nomination, but it appears the Florida governor has a long way to go to catch up.
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