The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Friday told NBC it was suspending their broadcast partnership after the US network’s cable news subsidiary was accused of asking questions in “bad faith” during the party’s last presidential debate.
“Pending further discussion between the RNC and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016,” the committee’s chairman Reince Priebus wrote to NBC News chairman Andrew Lack.
“The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith,” Priebus said.
“We need to ensure there is not a repeat performance,” he said.
CNBC moderators have faced a major backlash over their handling of the third Republican debate of the primary campaign on Wednesday in Colorado.
Candidates and observers admonished them for being too aggressive, straying off the announced topic of economics and finance, and pitting candidates against one another.
While debates are supposed to include tough questioning and contrast candidates and their visions, “CNBC’s moderators engaged in a series of ‘gotcha’ questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates,” Priebus said.
“While we are suspending our partnership with NBC News and its properties, we still fully intend to have a debate on that day, and will ensure that National Review remains part of it,” he said.
The conservative National Review magazine is one of the host partners for the debate on Feb. 26 next year, along with NBC and its Spanish language network, Telemundo.
NBC News issued a quick response, describing the RNC’s move as “a disappointing development.”
“However, we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party,” it said.
NBC could stand to lose major advertising revenue with the suspension of its debate broadcast rights.
The first Republican debate on Fox News, where moderators were also seen as aggressive, drew a record 24 million viewers. Wednesday’s debate drew 14 million.
Candidates, faced with CNBC’s questioning, lashed out on stage.
When moderator John Harwood interrupted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as he attempted to answer a question, Christie shot back: “Even in New Jersey, what you’re doing is called rude.”
“This is not a cage match,” US Senator Ted Cruz added. “And you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’... ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues people care about,” he said to a loud roar from the crowd.
Cruz used the Republican outrage over the debate moderators to appeal to donors.
“I am declaring war on the liberal media,” he began in a fundraising e-mail on Friday.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in