Fox Television Studios, the sister company of Fox News, might produce the much-anticipated and highly criticized Hillary Clinton mini series — but that doesn’t mean Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus is cutting the network out of the 2016 Republican presidential primary debates.
Priebus appeared on ‘State of the Union‘ with Candy Crowley on Sunday, where she asked him about the possibility of FTVS producing the biopic starring Diane Lane, as reported by The New York Times on Saturday. The RNC chair responded that the network putting it on the air would feel the wrath of his organization, not those who produce it.
“Which company is putting it on the air?” Priebus asked. “Who is doing the work? I’m not interested if they’re using the same caterer or whether they all drink Diet Coke, and I’m not boycotting Diane Lane … I am going to boycott the company that puts the mini series and the documentaries on the air for the American people to view.”
Priebus issued a stern warning to NBC and CNN last week, instructing them to pull their Hillary-centric programming — the Diane Lane series and a documentary, respectively — prior to the start of the RNC’s Summer Meeting on Aug. 14. If they refused to do so, he said he would “seek a binding vote stating that the RNC will neither partner with these networks in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates they sponsor.”
But on Saturday, FTVS spokesman Leslie Oren confirmed to The Times that the production company was in “the early stages” of talks with NBC. The announcement didn’t phase Priebus, however.
“I’m not interested in whether they use the same sound studio or whether they use the same set,” he stressed to Crowley. “I don’t know the truth of anything you’re talking about, but I do know what’s very clear is that the company that puts these things on the air to promote Hillary Clinton, including CNN, is the company that is not going to be involved in our debates. Period. Very simple.”
Crowley followed up, pressing Priebus about how he’d respond to the writers and producers of the Clinton series and film.
“Listen, I’m not going boycott Diane Lane,” Priebus again stressed. “It’s not her fault she decided to take a script. I’m not going boycott the food trucks that service all of the same companies.”
He claimed a researcher at CNN or NBC had worked to find the “ridiculous and stupid” connection to bring something else into the debate.
Debate aside, however, time is growing short for the two networks to decide if they’ll move forward with the programming — and thereby risk cutting themselves out of much of the 2016 buildup.
