Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate also had a meta contest: Who would win the fight between traditional TV — in this case, Fox News, which broadcast the debate — and Twitter, which counterprogrammed the debate with a conversation between Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox star-turned-Twitter streamer?
This morning, I’m declaring a winner: Twitter*. And also a loser: Twitter.
To tease that out: Carlson’s Trump interview was a zero-impact snooze, no matter what Twitter’s dubious metrics report (more on that in a minute). But Twitter was also the place to showcase what Twitter does best, even under Elon Musk’s ownership: provide a place for people to comment, in real time, about a news event. Which in this case was the TV debate.
For evidence, consult your own Twitter feed and scroll back to last night. Your Twitter may not look like my Twitter on a normal day, but I’m confident that in this case it’s going to look mighty similar. I saw Twitter users doing what they’ve always done on Twitter when there’s a news event or an awards show or a big game: annotating the thing in real time, whether that means cracking wise or hooting in derision or whatever.
That focus extended to Joe Biden’s campaign, which weighed in on the debate but not on Trump/Carlson:
And, most tellingly, it extended to Musk, who dutifully tweeted out links to the Trump interview on his own site (remember that one part of Musk’s fantasy is that Twitter becomes the world’s biggest media platform) but then found himself weighing in on the TV debate, just like everyone else:
In retrospect, it’s easy to understand why the RNC spectacle was better…
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