Proving that he is still a major figure in the GOP race for president, Donald Trump handed host Chris Wallace his highest ratings in six years on last weekend’s Fox News Sunday.
According to Deadline Hollywood, the Sunday morning politics show logged 1,618,000 total viewers for Trump’s visit, and 471K in news-demo viewers. “Fox News Sunday” saw a 23% jump over last year’s ratings on the same day.
Trump’s visit to the show marked the first time he and host Chris Wallace have met since the first presidential debate hosted by Fox News where Wallace served as a moderator. Immediately after the August 6 debate, both Trump and his supporters slammed Fox, saying that it was clear that Fox aimed to attack Trump throughout the debate.
Trump also said that the only reason the two GOP debates held thus far had any ratings at all is because he was part of them. In fact, during the show, Trump tried to get Wallace to agree with him that he was the reason for the ratings saying, “Do you have any idea why” the ratings were so high?
Wallace joked that it was the moderators that drew the viewers . Both laughed at the suggestion.
Still, despite constant claims from pundits and GOP insiders that Trump’s popularity is about to peak or that he is on the verge of quitting the race, polls consistently show that he leads all comers, some by double digits.
By some polls, Trump is nearing 100 days as the top pick of potential voters.
As The Hill reported, Trump “has led every major national Republican poll since late July, and a raft of new surveys released this week reveals that Trump’s support has held steady over those months, while his underlying fundamentals have improved.”
The only real competition Trump has seen of late has been from former neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson. At least one new Iowa Caucus poll shows Carson pulling ahead of Trump, 28 to 20 points.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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