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Jiujitsu couldn't have stopped the walrus that just heaved itself mercilessly upon a treacherous fox.
As I anticipated, the most telling outcome of debate night is the comparison of viewership - Tucker's Trump interview on Twitter ended with 75M views, more than triple the Republican debates on Fox at 24M views. A pretty smart move by Trump and Tucker (and Elon), and quite a statement when totaling the viewership of the two platforms to consider that around 104M are focusing on a Republican ticket, compared to the notion that Biden pulled more votes than Trump...and Obama. Something doesn't quite add up.
Although it would have been interesting for Trump to take better advantage of Tucker to guide the conversation, he played it safe and took control as Tucker struggled to interject, opening by justifying his choice to skip the debates due to his 50-70% lead over the other candidates, acknowledging his own intestinal fortitude for withstanding four indictments and wisely avoiding attention to Tucker's bold question of assassination risk, slamming "Crooked Joe Biden" throughout, sprinkling a little disdain at "DeSanctimonious", and concluding on Tucker's cue with his priority on border control.
Amongst the more notable nuggets, I appreciated Trump's framing of the need for banishing "Chinese imperialism" in Cuba and the Panama Canal, given the left's constant demonization of historical imperialism and nationalism as a uniquely Western phenomenon while China actively loan sharks the globe with its Belt and Roads initiative that requires participants to renounce Taiwan.
Trump issued a few surprise remarks, including a generous and even complimentary attitude towards Gavin Newsome, a statement that Jeffrey Epstein likely committed suicide, and an unbridled slamming of electric vehicles, which makes sense relative to the need for a transition and the impact on electric grids, but he might have given a supportive nod to the Elon Musk, and to Twitter, which he also described in less than flattering terms.
Otherwise, I didn't expect to hear anything earth-shattering from Trump, and I had no interest beyond debate highlights from the next day's news, particularly if any candidates paid homage to Trump, Twitter, or Tucker (Vivek Ramaswamy, check).
So, again we conclude that there is a healthy appetite for a certain flavor of politics, served up fresh with no artificial ingredients.
As for Fox, one might say it's dangling by a thread, but no one uses threads.
