Paul goes after media after failing to make GOP debate cut

“I think a lot of voters are going to be unhappy that I’ve arbitrarily been excluded from the debate,” he said Thursday in a radio interview on WTOP. Paul later made a very specific hand gesture to reflect how he feels about the press:

Paul failed to meet the criteria set out last year by the Fox Business Network to qualify for Thursday’s scheduled GOP debate.

The cable news network explained last week that the senator’s national polling numbers were simply too low for him to qualify. Unfortunately for Paul, a survey released this week by the Des Moines Register showed that he would have made the cut if it were published earlier.

Paul said after he was demoted by FBN that he and voters have had it with media’s “arbitrary” and “capricious” polling standards.

“It won’t take much for our supporters to understand why we’re doing this,” he said last week. “You want war? We’ll give it to you.”

The senator has tried to find a way into the main event, but FBN has not been swayed by his entreaties, arguing that he simply didn’t qualify in time for the debate deadline.

The senator’s campaign said last week of his exclusion from the main debate stage, “To exclude candidates on faulty analysis is to disenfranchise the voter. Creating ‘tiers’ based on electoral results of real votes might make sense but creating ‘tiers’ on bad science is irresponsible.”

Paul has been offered a spot at the so-called “undercard” debate, which is comprised entirely of the lowest-polling GOP candidates, but he has refused to take a seat at what has been dubbed the “kid’s table.”

“I think it’s a big mistake to let the media designate that your campaign is somehow in a lower-tier in … a race of about 12 candidates,” he said Thursday. “We’ve raised about $25 million. We have 1,000 precincts chairs in Iowa.” The senator has opted instead to host a town hall event at the same time as the main GOP debate.

“We’re not going to accept any artificial designation by the media. We’re going to take our message directly to the voters. We’ll have a national town hall tonight at 9 o’clock, and we’re telling people, ‘Turn off your TV and tune into us on social media,'” he added.

Paul also took aim at the media’s reliance on polling data, explaining that it’s “crazy” that they have the power to decide who gets to be heard based only on these numbers.

“We’re kind of crazy to attribute too much science to polling. Polling has been way off in caucuses before,” he said Thursday.

Paul continued his anti-media campaign Thursday, partaking in several additional radio interviews that saw him disparaging the press and its coverage of the primary. This is not the first time that Paul has gone after media for its reliance on polling data. He has actually griped about this issue for quite some time.

“[W]e’re being led by the nose, and the news media is led by the nose, to think somehow [GOP front-runner Donald Trump] is going to win this because of these polls,” he said earlier this month in an interview on “Meet the Press.”

“The polls don’t, I believe, capture who’s going to actually vote,” he added.

A spokesman for Paul did not respond for the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.