Donald Trump’s campaign manager predicted that Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate on Fox News would only get “about 2 million” viewers because Trump refused to show up. In fact, “Fox News likely had 11 million to 13 million viewers for the debate,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reports.

Thursday’s debate ended up getting higher ratings than the the last debate in which Trump participated. “Fox’s Trump-less debate had an 8.4 household rating, according to early Nielsen data from so-called metered markets,” reports CNN’s Stelter. “The most recent GOP debate, televised two weeks ago on the Fox Business Network, had a household rating of 7.4.” It’s possible that Thursday’s debate had up to 2 million more viewers than the January 15 debate that included Trump.

Read the article “Debate Without Trump Gets Better Ratings Than Last Debate with Trump” on weeklystandard.com.