During an appearance on Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Senator Marco Rubio slammed CNBC’s Republican presidential debate, specifically the moderators who “can't wait for their chance to show off in front of their buddies by asking some question they think is going to embarrass, especially Republicans.”
The Republican presidential candidate argued that last night’s debate wasn’t “atypical from what you see among most people in the mainstream media which is, privately they believe they're smarter than the people running.”
While Rubio lamented that the moderators tried to “embarrass” the Republicans on stage, the “bigger frustration” was the lack of substantive questions being asked:
Everyone was ready to talk about trade policy and the debt and tax policies, and we were ready for that. Everybody was. And then you get questions like the ones everybody got. Which were clearly designed to either get us to fight against each other, or to say something embarrassing about each other -- about us, and then ask us to react.
And that's what the purpose of these questions were. It became irritating. You go on a network that specializes in economic news, and you get questions like some of the ones that were asked last night. And the real frustration begins to bubble over.
See relevant transcript below.
Fox News’ Fox and Friends
October 29, 2015
STEVE DOOCY: Coming up right now from Colorado, as well, is Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio. Senator, congratulations, a number of people say you were one of the winners last night. But it seems universal the big loser was CNBC. What kind of an agenda did they have going going into that debate with you guys last night?
MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, I don't think it's atypical from what you see among most people in the mainstream media which is, privately they believe they're smarter than the people running and they can't wait for their chance to show off in front of their buddies by asking some question they think is going to embarrass, especially Republicans. I think the bigger frustration you saw is that all those candidates on the stage had prepared for a substantive debate. Everyone was ready to talk about trade policy and the debt and tax policies, and we were ready for that. Everybody was.
And then you get questions like the ones everybody got. Which were clearly designed to either get us to fight against each other, or to say something embarrassing about each other -- about us, and then ask us to react. And that's what the purpose of these questions were. It became irritating. You go on a network that specializes in economic news, and you get questions like some of the ones that were asked last night. And the real frustration begins to bubble over.
