Tucker Carlson's Trump Interview: Debunking the Claim of 230 Million Video Views

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters falsely claim that Tucker Carlson's interview with him has received hundreds of millions of views on Elon Musk's social media site, X. In reality, the interview has only received 14.8 million video views.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently interviewed former president Donald Trump on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Trump and his supporters have claimed that the video of the interview received hundreds of millions of views on Elon Musk's social media site. However, this is not the case.

Trump posted on his social networking platform, Truth Social, stating that the interview could reach 200 million views or more. Later, he claimed that the video had reached 230 million views, surpassing the Super Bowl's viewership. However, these numbers are misleading.

The views metric displayed on X, which shows 236 million views, does not accurately represent the number of views the video received. As of the publication of this article, the interview has actually received 14.8 million video views on X.

The discrepancy arises from the fact that the views metric on X refers to tweet views, not video views. Tweet views count the number of impressions a tweet receives, including when a user actively goes to the tweet page or when a tweet appears in a user's timeline through retweets or the recommendation algorithm. This means that a single user can be counted multiple times in the view count.

Video views, on the other hand, count the number of times a video is played on the platform. A video view on X is counted if the media plays for two or more seconds, or if more than 50 percent of the video player is visible on the screen while the user attempts to scroll past it. Autoplays are also counted.

In the case of Tucker Carlson's Trump interview, the video itself was played only 14.8 million times, which accounts for just over six percent of the total 236 million views displayed on X.

Twitter, under Musk's leadership, removed the public video view count in May, after initially adding a "views" count metric to tweets. This led to confusion among users, as they often used the higher tweet view number to make their content appear more popular. The company quietly removed the smaller, more accurate video view number from public display without giving an official reason.

It is worth noting that older Android versions of the Twitter app still display the public video view metrics on X, which is how Mashable obtained the data for this article.

In comparison to other episodes of Tucker Carlson on X, his interview with Trump has a significantly higher ratio of impressions to actual video views. Previous episodes of the show typically had five to six times more impressions than video views, while the Trump interview has a ratio of nearly 17:1.

Despite the claims made by Trump's supporters based on X's public view count data, the real video view numbers paint a different picture. The interview did not receive hundreds of millions of views as claimed, but rather garnered 14.8 million video views.

In conclusion, the views metric displayed on X does not accurately represent the number of video views. The interview with Trump received significantly fewer video views than claimed, highlighting the importance of understanding the distinction between tweet views and video views on the platform.

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