Critics cry foul after GOP debate

NEW YORK - CNBC reached its biggest audience ever with the third Republican presidential debate but paid a price in criticism of how its moderators handled the opportunity to question the candidates.

The Nielsen company said 14 million viewers watched the debate Wednesday, down from the 24 million who saw the first contest on Fox News Channel in February, but far higher than a Republican debate on CNBC in 2011 that drew 3.3 million.

On Thursday, debate moderators Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick, and John Harwood were in the spotlight. Individual candidates grumbled and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said the moderators' performance "was extremely disappointing." But it wasn't just Republicans who were critical.

Representatives from all the GOP campaigns plan a private meeting in the next few days to air out complaints about how the debates were being run, said Douglas Watts, a Ben Carson spokesman.

The next GOP debate is Nov. 10 in Milwaukee, on the Fox Business Network.

At the outset Wednesday night, Quintanilla asked each candidate a job-interview question: "What is your biggest weakness?"

Harwood then said to Donald Trump: "You've done very well on this campaign so far by promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it, send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit, and make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. Let's be honest, is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"

Trump called it "not a very nicely asked question," and one of Harwood's NBC News colleagues, Joe Scarborough, called the question "absolutely embarrassing" on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Thursday.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and debate expert, said Harwood's last sentence ruined what could have been a useful question.

"It sounds to the audience as if one is spinning the question in a way that presupposes the candidate's candidacy is illegitimate," she said.

CNBC officials privately noted that Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich praised the debate in later interviews on the network. CNBC would not comment beyond spokesman Brian Steel's saying: "People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions."

When Quintanilla asked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz whether his opposition to a congressional budget deal showed "that you're not the kind of problem-solver American voters want," he struck back.

"The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media," Cruz said. "This is not a cage match. . . . How about talking about the substantive issues?"

That drew applause from the Republican audience, and led other candidates to join in.

Still, the moderators had their defenders.

"Presented with facts and figures that didn't fit their story, the leading Republican candidates accused the moderators of malice and deceit," wrote Will Saletan at Slate.

Some observers criticized the moderators for a lack of preparation and for a failure to keep control.

At one point, Quick stated that Trump had been critical of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for supporting an increase in the number of visas for foreign professional workers. Trump shot back that the assertion wasn't true - that he had not been critical of Zuckerberg.

Quick seemed flustered and questioned her own research, allowing Trump to take control of the narrative.

But Quick was right, according to a document Trump's campaign had released on his immigration stances.

Similarly, when Carson was asked about his relationship with Mannatech, a nutritional supplement company that settled a claim of false advertising from the state of Texas, he turned the question onto Quintanilla, who noted that the neurosurgeon was on the company's home page.

Carson said it was done without his permission.

When Quintanilla followed up - "Does that speak to your vetting process or judgment in any way?" - the audience booed. "See?" Carson said. "They know."

The answer ended the exchange - though Carson has had a long relationship with Mannatech, appearing in videos with the look of ads and delivering paid speeches at company-sponsored events. According to the Wall Street Journal, Carson started taking the company's supplements after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and said in a video that his symptoms went away within three weeks of taking the company's pills.

Quintanilla asked Carson about none of that.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, on Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends on Thursday, said many people in the media "privately . . . believe they're smarter than the people running, and they can't wait to show off in front of their buddies by asking some question they think is going to embarrass" candidates.

He said candidates prepared for a substantive debate.

"It became irritating," he said. "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 . . . real frustration begins to bubble over."

This article contains information from the Washington Post.