There has been plenty of criticism for CNBC’s “horrible” handling of the third GOP debate, but none so loud as that from right-leaning pundits.
From radio to television, the right-wing commentariat is not at all happy with the way that CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick and John Harwood carried themselves during the debate, or with the often leading questions that were lobbed at the Republican candidates.
“It was an abortion!” conservative radio host Glenn Beck declared Thursday morning.
Beck later praised Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for accusing the moderators of playing partisan politics.
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“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said, accusing the moderators of asking bogus “gotchas” of the GOP candidates. “This is not a cage match.”
“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,” the Texas senator added. “That debate was between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary.”
Cruz’s remarks on CNBC’s supposed media bias were one of the largest applause lines of the evening.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh was as displeased as Beck with the tone of the debate, accusing Harwood in particular of gross journalistic malpractice.
“[W]hen I saw John Harwood’s name on the moderator list, I knew that we were headed for one of the most biased nights that we were going to see, because if there’s anybody openly and willing to act as though he is in the Hillary camp, it is John Harwood, New York Times, former Wall Street Journal, now CNBC. The display that we got last night was a culmination of everything that many of us have been trying to tell the American people the Drive-By Media is: Arrogant, smug. I mean, it goes so far beyond bias,” he said.
The radio host continued, “Bias doesn’t even cover what happened last night. That was a kill show last night. That show was designed to kill every one of those candidates. That debate last night was designed to take them all out. That debate last night was to grease the skids for [Democratic front-runner] Hillary Clinton. That was the sole purpose of that debate last night. And the smugness and the arrogance and the condescension with which those moderators went about it finally came back and bit them to the point that everybody watching that debate, everybody, even other Drive-By Media types saw what was going on.”
Earlier, on Wednesday, Fox News’ Sean Hannity declared that the big loser that evening was CNBC.
“You know I got to tell you something. Between the comments of Ted Cruz tonight, and the comments of Marco Rubio tonight and the comments of Chris Christie tonight and the comments of Mike Huckabee tonight, you know, I’m looking at The Drudge Report and ‘The debate was an encyclopedic example of liberal media bias,'” Hannity said. “You know what? This is going to go down in history as a really bad night for the media.”
Radio host Laura Ingraham, for her part, couldn’t understand how the GOP even allowed its candidates to be put on the same stage as Harwood and Quintanilla.
“Someone explain [why the] RNC allowed CNBC to host a debate?” she asked on social media.
