Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
If they held a Republican primary debate and no one watched, did it even happen?
That variation on a classic philosophical puzzle haunted me while watching the fourth GOP debate from Tuscaloosa, Alabama on NewsNation Wednesday evening. As The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last pointed out earlier in the day, the network has…modest ratings, coming in 63rd on all of basic cable, far behind Fox News, MSNBC, and other news organizations that typically host presidential debates. It’s almost as if the Republican National Committee preferred to disappear the event.
Why would the RNC want to do that? Maybe because it’s an outpost of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which is running 47 points ahead of the second-place Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and would prefer to wrap things up before a single vote is cast.