Republican presidential candidate John Kasich thought the CNBC moderators of Wednesday’s GOP debate did just fine, despite the consensus in the political media world that the moderators were the night’s biggest losers.
In an appearance on Fox Business, Kasich defended the moderators from his GOP rivals and other critics who said they lost control of the debate and asked excessively hostile questions.
“Everybody’s criticizing them,” Kasich said. “I thought they did fine.”
He said the debate was similar to the first debate which was hosted by Fox News in August. “There were some questions that people asked that others didn’t like, but I would say by and large, it was a fairly controlled debate.”
Kasich’s view is an outlier next to his rivals for the GOP nomination, nealry all of whom attacked the debate moderators during and after the debate. After the debate, Ben Carson said the questions were “unfair.”
During the event, the night’s loudest applause from the audience came when Ted Cruz rebuked the moderators for their questions.
“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?”
