It was a bad, bad night for CNBC and the rest of its mainstream media comrades on Wednesday. From the very start of the third Republican primary debate it was clear just how shamelessly biased and shamefully unprofessional so many “journalists” in the major networks have become.
Even before the two-hour circus was over, the various campaigns were issuing formal complaints to CNBC. The repeatedly-attacked and mocked candidates defended themselves throughout, with both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump landing knockout blows. The second the fiasco was over, the Republican National Committee officially condemned the event. The debate was so god-awful that left-wing outlets are hammering CNBC almost as hard as the right today.
The Daily Wire has already provided our grades for the candidates (with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz leading the pack). So without further ado, here is an assessment of CNBC’s debate moderators:
John Harwood: F. From almost the first word out of his mouth, Harwood glaringly revealed that he had no interest in conducting a fair and constructive debate. In his first question to Trump, he dismissively mocked the Republican frontrunner:
“Mr. Trump, you have done very well in this campaign so far by promising to build another wall and make another country pay for it, send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit, and make Americans better off because your greatness will replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. Let’s be honest. Is this a comic book version of a presidential candidate?”
Harwood tried to unfairly present Marco Rubio’s tax plan by suggesting that it helped the top one percent far more than the rest of Americans. “The Tax Foundation … scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top one-percent as to people in the middle of the income scale,” Harwood said to Rubio. “Since you’re a champion of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, don’t you have that backward?”
“No, you wrote a story on it, you had to go back and correct it,” said Rubio.
Though Harwood insisted, “No, I didn’t,” his own tweet from two weeks ago shows how misleading his question was:
Harwood’s final significant exchange also involved Trump, when Harwood claimed (contrary to multiple reports) that CNBC had always planned to limit the debate to two hours. Trump replied forcefully by basically calling Harwood a liar. “”That’s not right, that’s absolutely not right. You know that,” said Trump.
“This is not a cage match. And if you look at the questions, “Donald Trump are you a comic book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”
Ted Cruz
For this and more, Harwood would fail any journalistic ethics course.
Carl Quintanilla: D-. If Harwood hadn’t had such a miserable performance, Quintanilla would probably be getting an F, but in comparison, a D- seems about right. Quintanilla, after all, started the whole thing off with a “gimmicky and rather puerile inquiry,” asking each candidate to list their biggest weakness, a question rightly ignored by many of them.
Quintanilla was the delivery boy for two particular questions that resulted in two of the more memorable anti-CNBC/mainstream media rants by the candidates.
One resulted in Cruz unloading on the moderators and the media in general, arguably the most memorable moment in the two-hour event. When Quintanilla asked Cruz if his opposition to the budget “compromise” (i.e., Republican concession) meant that he was not fit to be president, Cruz brought the house down with his response. Here’s a partial transcript:
QUINTANILLA: Congressional Republicans, Democrats and the White House are about to strike a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets of the fear that a Washington crisis is on the way. Does your opposition to it show you’re not the kind of problem-solver that American voters want?
CRUZ: You know, let me say something at the outset, the questions asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And if you look at the questions, “Donald Trump are you a comic book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?
(thunderous applause)
QUINTANILLA: (inaudible) Do we get credit for this one?
CRUZ: And Carl, Carl I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate where every fawning question from the media was: which of you is more handsome and wise? And let me be clear…
QUINTANILLA: So this is a question about the debt limit which is, you have thirty seconds to answer should you choose to do so.
CRUZ (ignoring him): Let me be clear, the men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators have any intention in voting in a Republican primary…
Another bad moment for Quintanilla came courtesy of Chris Christie (who had a strong night). When Quintanilla asked the candidates about congressional oversight of fantasy football, Christie chastised him and his colleagues for the absurd line of questioning.
“Are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football?” replied Christie, clearly exasperated. “Wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt, we have people out of work, we have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop? Can we stop? Seriously?”
Because we try to grade on a curve here, Quintanilla gets a D-.
Becky Quick: DNF. We’re giving Quick a “Did Not Finish,” which admittedly is not a grade but a sports term. She provided the ultimate cop-out answer that proved to be the final nail in the coffin of credibility for the woeful CNBC team. When Rand Paul requested more time for respond to the statement of another candidate, Quick “explained” the “rationale” for the moderator’s rude habits: “It’s at the discretion of the moderators,” said Quick.
By the end of the debate, the Republican candidates were essentially (and rightly) ignoring Quick and company, often dismissing questions, pivoting to topics they felt were more important, and openly challenging the moderators and the network.
On that note, we’ll leave you with our grade for CNBC: Z. As The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro explained, “There are no letter grades that properly fit how terrible the network was.”