--- title: Republican Debate Beats Donald Trump Rally in Ratings Battle description: The Fox News debate got more viewers than the Trump rally on cable news canonical: https://time.com/4199653/republican-debate-trump-rally-ratings/ author: Maya Rhodan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-29T15:13:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T19:31:49.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Republican Debate Beats Trump Rally in Ratings Battle og:description: Fox News debate got more viewers than the Trump rally on cable news og:url: https://time.com/4199653/republican-debate-trump-rally-ratings/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f0bf9e16dd1506e/69887b44bc6cfcbb973db7ca/trump10.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Event To Benefit Veterans Organizations og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Republican Debate Beats Trump Rally in Ratings Battle twitter:description: Fox News debate got more viewers than the Trump rally on cable news twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f0bf9e16dd1506e/69887b44bc6cfcbb973db7ca/trump10.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Republican Debate Beats Trump Rally in Ratings Battle > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=aee9fb15-3640-44ac-a6b2-8d4d16f8f616&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Watch The Republican Debate in Under 4 Minutes [Watch (HLS stream): Watch The Republican Debate in Under 4 Minutes](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yAWlwSjX.m3u8) (3:34)  _Published 2016-01-29. GOP Debate-012816-v1_ by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:31 PM UTCPublished: Jan 29, 2016 3:13 PM UTC by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:31 PM UTCPublished: Jan 29, 2016 3:13 PM UTC Republican frontrunner Donald Trump hosted a rally for veterans instead of attending [Thursday night’s debate](http://time.com/4199392/republican-debate-ted-cruz-donald-trump/)—but [more people tuned in to watch the debate](http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/29/media/republican-debate-ratings-donald-trump/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom) than to watch the Donald, according to ratings data. More than 12.4 million people turned their televisions to Fox News to watch the debate, according to analyst Nielsen. Though viewership is down compared to most earlier debates, Fox got more eyeballs than the two networks that carried the Trump rally combined: the two networks, CNN and MSNBC, reportedly earned about a quarter of the ratings Fox did, according to CNN. It’s impossible to say whether Trump’s presence [would have boosted the debate ratings](http://time.com/4199467/gop-debate-donald-trump), but the candidate was not in two minds about it: > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/693171827363991553) The debate was once again dominated Thursday night television, beating out all other broadcasts that night and dominating the conversation online. On Twitter some 221,000 people were tweeting about the event in the U.S. and those were seen 162.8 million times, according to Twitter TV impressions data from Nielsen. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who [had a tough time](http://time.com/4199392/republican-debate-ted-cruz-donald-trump/) in Trump’s absence, was the most mentioned candidate of the night as his last name was mentioned in 110,000 tweets about the debate. ## Transcript Welcome to the seventh Republican presidential debate. I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon. [ LAUGH ] Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way. [ LAUGH ] He's an entertaining guy, he's the greatest show on earth. I have not insulted Donald personally and I don't intend to. I kind of Donald Trump, he was a little teddy bear to me. I want to thank Everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect, to show up and make the case to the people of this state and people of the country why each of us believe we would make the best Commander- in- Chief. I've been held accountable for six years of the Governor of New Jersey. And with a Democratic legislature, I've gotten conservative Things done. That is exactly what I'll do as a president of United States. The ball collection of your phone data. The invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. I don't think you have to give up your liberty for a fall sense of security. We cannot fix these things in this country. The sole security, the boarder Balancing the budget. Getting wages to grow faster. Unless we lead as conservatives, but we also invite people in from the other party. We need people who think out of the box, and can solve problems. The last four questions have been, Rand please attack Ted. Marco please attack Ted. Chris please attack Ted. Jeb please attack Ted. It is a debate, sir. If you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage. You cannot destroy ISIS with a military that's being diminished. When I'm President we are rebuilding the U. S. military because the world is a safer and a better place. When America's the strongest military in the world. You claim it is tough talk to discuss carpet bombing. It is not tough talk. It is a different fundamental military strategy than what we've seen from Barack Obama. We need to arm directly to Kurds, embed our troops with the Iraqi military, re- engage with the Sunni tribal leaders, get the lawyers off the damn backs of the military once and for all. Arming the allies of ISIS will make the situation worse. Then what we really need to do is defeat ISIS, but if you defeat Assad, what you will wind up with is a larger and more powerful ISIS that occupies that space. If there were someplace in this country where radical Jihadists are planning to attack the United States, we will go after them wherever they are, and if we capture them alive, They are going to Guantanamo. And if you wanna defend the country, it begins with border security, and this is where I've had my disagreement with Senator Rubio. You can't be in favor of defending us against Islam, radical Islam, if you're not for border security. I will support law Law enforcement and we will stop radical terrorist attacks in this country by supporting out intelligence community and our law enforcement community. We need to stop allowing political correctness to dictate our policies. We are a nation of immigrants. As such, everyone is welcome, from any race, any country, any religion if they wanna be Americans. We are not gonna round up and deport 12 million people but we are not gonna go around handing out citizenship cards either. Nations will have to make a choice. They can do business with Iran or they can do business with America. And I am very confident that they're going to choose America before they choose the Iranian economy. If we find out they're developing a nuclear weapon and we know how to get to it We're gonna go take it out. What we need to do is make sure that the war on drugs is equal protection under the law and that we don't unfairly incarcerate another generation of young African American males. Get rid of Planned Parenthood funding for the United States of America. [ APPLAUSE ] Bernie Sanders is a socialist. I think Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for president of Sweden. Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being the Commander and Chief of the United States. In fact one of her first acts as president may very well be to pardon herself. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4199653/republican-debate-trump-rally-ratings/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4199653/republican-debate-trump-rally-ratings/"},"headline":"Republican Debate Beats Trump Rally in Ratings Battle","datePublished":"2016-01-29T15:13:01.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T19:31:49.000Z","description":"Fox News debate got more viewers than the Trump rally on cable news","url":"https://time.com/4199653/republican-debate-trump-rally-ratings/","keywords":["2016 Election","2016 Election","Donald Trump","trump","Republican debate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f0bf9e16dd1506e/69887b44bc6cfcbb973db7ca/trump10.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Maya Rhodan","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f0bf9e16dd1506e/69887b44bc6cfcbb973db7ca/trump10.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Event To Benefit Veterans Organizations","caption":"Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Event To Benefit Veterans Organizations","creditText":"Patrick T. 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