The confirmed and likely Republican presidential candidates are a mixed bag when it comes to embattled ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.
It became clear last week that Stephanopoulos donated $50,000 to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Clinton Foundation charity. In response, some GOP candidates have said they’re avoiding any interviews with Stephanopoulos, while others have indicated they’re not willing to blackball him just yet.
“Carly does interviews with Hillary apologists pretty often, as you can see from our press coverage,” a spokesperson for former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said in a statement. “So, we’ll leave it to ABC to decide whether their viewers can still trust that George is telling them everything they need to know when it comes to his 2016 coverage, or just the things that are about to leak in the conservative press.”
That’s a reference to last week, when Stephanopoulos leaked word of his donation to Politico, after the Washington Free Beacon was about to break the news.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio defended Stephanopoulos from critics in an interview with the Marietta Daily Journal, a Georgia newspaper. “I feel that George Stephanopoulos has been fair to us in the past,” he said in the interview, which was published on Sunday. “I personally have never had a negative interaction with him or the feeling that he’s asked me anything unfair or improper. That said, obviously, we know what we know and it does cause questions, but I personally have never had any reason to question his ability to be an effective journalist in the times I’ve interacted with him.”
Real estate magnate Donald Trump told Bloomberg Politics’ Dave Weigel that he would still participate in a debate moderated by Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos has apologized to ABC viewers multiple times for his donations, which took place in 2012, 2013 and 2014. He said he would not moderate his network’s Republican presidential primary debate in February, but that he would continue covering the race otherwise.
Still, some in the GOP 2016 field were unforgiving, and believe the donations, plus his past work as a top adviser to President Bill Clinton, mean he should be avoided.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said in an interview last week that he hasn’t done any recent interviews with Stephanopoulos because he’s “too close to the Clintons to really give an objective interview.”
“Of course not,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters last week when asked if Stephanopoulos should moderate a debate. “Debates should not be moderated by partisan Democrats who are actively supporting one of the candidates.”
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on Fox News that there was never a chance that Stephanopoulos was going to moderate a GOP debate. “I’ve made it very clear and I’ve made public statements about this, that the issue for me, even more so than the donation, was the fact that he worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton,” he said. “How can I, as chairman of the national party, have the former employee of the Clintons, who’s running on the other side, be the person on the stage deposing our candidate?”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have yet to weigh in on the controversy. A spokesman for Bush’s political action committee declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Walker’s said she expected him to discuss the matter in upcoming media interviews.
A spokesperson for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson did not return a request for comment.
