Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday excoriated the CNBC moderators for the third Republican presidential primary debate for turning the event into a “cage match” that was trying to trip up the candidates and ignore substantive issues.
From the start, the debate moderators asked a series of pointed questions that pit candidates against each other and attempted to poke holes in some of their policy proposals. When asked by moderator Carl Quintanilla about raising the federal debt ceiling, Cruz had enough and turned the tables on the questioners.
“The questions that you’ve asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said to thundering applause from the audience.
He then accused moderators of focusing only on the negatives, like Sen. Marco Rubio’s skipped Senate votes and Jeb Bush’s falling poll numbers, and accused them of trying to quiz Ben Carson on his tax plan to see if he can “do math.”
“This is not a cage match and you look at the questions: Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?” Cruz said. “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?”
“The contrast with the Democratic debate where every fawning question from the media was which of you is more handsome than wise … The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participatnt in the Democratic debate,” he said to more applause.
The moderators then informed Cruz that he had chosen to critique the debate format rather than answer the question about the debt ceiling. Cruz attempted to answer the question directly, but the moderators moved on from the back-and-forth.
