In the second of three segments on Thursday reporting on the fallout from Wednesday’s CNBC Republican presidential debate, NBC Nightly News touted an editorial by The New York Times calling on Governor Chris Christie (N.J.) to drop out of the 2016 field.
National correspondent Peter Alexander chronicled the post-debate movement among the candidates not named Jeb Bush (as correspondent Hallie Jackson had done that in the previous story) by first mentioning that Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) was “abruptly postponing a campaign swing through Nevada, instead rushing back to Capitol Hill to rail against a bipartisan budget deal.”
Speaking of Cruz and the debate, Alexander introduced the now-famous clip of Cruz railing against the liberal media by dubbing it “a missile against the media and the moderators” and “[a] conservative war cheered on by the Republican crowd.”
Alexander, however, then turned his attention to Christie and the calls by the liberal paper and their extremely liberal editorial board for the New Jersey Governor to leave after what many ruled to be a strong showing:
ALEXANDER: This afternoon, The New York Times called on Chris Christie to drop out. His response? “Can't read the article because I don't have a subscription...I am not going anywhere.” That fiery exchange just hours after this impassioned appeal about misplaced priorities.
REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (N.J.): We have people out of work, we have ISIS and al-Qaeda attacking us, and we are talking about fantasy football? Can we stop? Can we stop? Seriously!
It should be noted that this comes one day after NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America pushed an editorial by the Florida newspaper The Sun-Sentinel that called on Senator Marco Rubio (Fl.) to resign over his attendance record in the Senate.
ABC’s World News Tonight had one noteworthy moment of their own in its sole piece on the GOP debate. Republican field correspondent Tom Llamas was able to grab a short interview with Rubio on Thursday and wondered what it felt like for fellow Floridian and mentor Jeb Bush to call him out by using that very newspaper editorial:
LLAMAS: Tonight, Rubio telling us he's not running against Bush, he's running for president. [TO LLAMAS] Last night, when he was on that stage and he called on you to resign, personally, what did that feel like?
RUBIO: You know, these things happen in campaigns, unfortunately, and I'm not going to let a campaign change me.
