Debates

Even after telling Florida Senator Marco Rubio that he had the “breakout performance of the night” during Wednesday’s Republican debate, on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie urged the GOP presidential candidate to resign from the U.S. Senate: “...once and for all, answer The Sun Sentinel’s question, should you resign, would you resign? Why not leave your Senate seat and just remove…

Following Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican presidential debate, on Thursday’s CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose repeatedly tried to lecture Senator Marco Rubio over Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2012 Benghazi attack. After Rubio stated that he had not engaged in personal attacks throughout this campaign, Rose immediately rushed to defend Clinton and proclaimed that on the issue of Benghazi…

Tuning into Morning Joe today, the question on this NewsBusters' mind was whether—given that MNSBC and CNBC are corporate cousins—Joe Scarborough would have the guts to go after John Harwood. He did.  In at least three segments this morning, Scarborough criticized Harwood for what he called his "embarrassing" performance as moderator of the GOP debate last night. Scarborough's repeated criticism…

Just a few hours after their atrocious performance in the third Republican presidential debate, two of the co-moderators from CNBC joined MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to double down on their liberal stances with John Harwood refusing to admit he lied regarding Senator Marco Rubio’s tax plan while Sharon Epperson trashed Carly Fiorina and how Republican candidates supposedly “don't really care about the…

Wednesday night, an Associated Press reporter told us that it's the press's job to ask "tough, impertinent" questions like the ones moderators at Wednesday night's CNBC-hosted Republican debate were asking. Ken Dilanian, who is apparently the AP's Intelligence Writer — seriously — really needs to consult a dictionary before he makes such a complete fool of himself. Here is what Dilanian tweeted…

The competition for the worst moderator moment of Wednesday night's GOP debate is fierce. John Harwood's rephrasing of an old and discredited charge that Marco Rubio's tax plan disproportionately benefits the top 1 percent has to be in the running. That's especially true because Harwood himself had to back away from a simialr contention two weeks ago, yet still brought up the same issue with a…

Syndicated columnist and FNC contributor Charles Krauthammer was Bill O’Reilly’s first guest on the 11:00 p.m. Eastern edition of The O’Reilly Factor after Wednesday’s CNBC debate and tore into the moderators for a “most appalling performance” in which they were “obnoxious,” “interrupting,” and “disorganized.”

"This got a little revolting tonight," MSNBC's Chris Matthews lamented to colleague Chris Jansing in a post-debate special edition of Hardball Wednesday night. Matthews was chagrined with Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) scoring points with the debate audience by attacking the liberal media.

With his "viral video" line about the liberal media being the Democrats' super PAC to his deft handling of Jeb Bush's attacks, Sen. Marco Rubio won the night, MSNBC analysts agreed in a special Hardball.

Governor Chris Christie (N.J.) assailed CNBC debate co-moderator Carl Quintanilla for dedicating a line of questioning to whether daily fantasy football websites should face regulation by the federal government: "Are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football? Wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt, we have people out of work, we have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking…

MRC president Brent Bozell issued a statement Wednesday night criticizing the overall tilt and tone of the CNBC Republican debate in Boulder:  "The CNBC debate will go down in history as an encyclopedic example of liberal media bias on stage. The audience roared its disdain for these so-called 'journalists,' and all of America heard it."

Wednesday's New York Times featured "Ted Cruz as Beowulf: Matching Candidates With Books They Sound Like," in which the Times measured the candidates’ debate rhetoric by complexity and eagerly forwarded some unchallenged stereotypes of "simplistic" conservatives: "'Trump has the language of the board room, the language of entertainment,' [professor Sharon] Jarvis said. 'He really speaks to the…

During Wednesday's Republican presidential debate on CNBC, Senator Marco Rubio (Fl.) shellacked the news media as “the ultimate super PAC” for Democrats and Hillary Clinton. "Last week, Hillary Clinton...admitted she had sent e-mails to her family saying hey, this attack in Benghazi was caused by al-Qaeda-like elements. She spent over a week telling the families of those victims and the American…

During Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate on CNBC, Senator Marco Rubio (Fl.) excoriated the Florida newspaper The Sun-Sentinel and debate co-moderator Carl Quintanilla for raising questions about his young age and calls for him to resign from the Senate due to missed votes as examples of “a double standard” and “bias that exists in the American media today.”