Stephen Colbert moderates Trump vs. Trump ‘Late Show’ debate

Ted Cruz, R-Texas, left, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, right, listen during a Republican presidential primary debate, Thur… The unsociable act only won him more friends.

On the other hand, according to Google, “debate live stream” beat out searches for “Trump live stream” by 170% on Thursday night.

On the web, there were indications that Trump dominated political conversations even without being present at the debate.

The GOP hopefuls may have railed against Donald Trump in his absence on Thursday night, but some also took a cue from his anti-Fox News playbook.

Trump enjoys greater support in New Hampshire-recent polls have him up about 19 points over Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who are almost tied in second.

Depending on how the ratings are spun, Fox News and Trump can both stake the claim that they were the winners of the TV popularity contest. As Trump relayed the story to a packed hotel ballroom, he told Fox to “give $5 million dollars, make a donation, $5 million dollars for the vets and I ” ll come and do your debate”.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He scheduled the benefit for veterans charities, which he said raised $6 million, in an attempt to counterprogram the debate and recapture the media spotlight after refusing to participate in the debate because of a tiff with Fox.

All in all, it seemed Cruz was happy that the debate was Donald-less. But that only accounted for around 11 percent of the total 1.3 million debate-related tweets during the event, according to Spredfast.

Rubio has often been seen as a more moderate member of the Republican field of candidates and during his town hall event in Ames, he painted himself as the only candidate that could unite the party, as well as the most electable member of the GOP. “He’s a spectacle.” She is actually a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the show seemed to good to miss.

Perhaps a more fair comparison to Thursday night’s debate would be CNN’s December 15 face-off, which had 18 million viewers. Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate on FOX News Channel scored 12.5 million viewers, making it the second-highest rated telecast in the network’s history. The paper endorsed his rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie previous year, and he railed against its publisher Joe McQuaid “a bad person”, “incompetent”, “a psycho”, and an “ant”.