Shortly after Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate came to an end, a CNBC spokesman tried to fend off early criticism of the network’s moderators, saying the candidates should have been prepared for “tough questions.”
In a one-line statement, CNBC’s Brian Steel said, “People who want to be President of the United States should be able to answer tough questions.”
Many people, including several presidential candidates and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, have attacked the network for its handling of the debate. Priebus sent a tweet Wednesday night saying that CNBC “should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”
The debate’s moderators have defended their questions as fair game. In an interview on MSNBC, moderator John Harwood said the candidates were urged to attack the media, “and that’s what they did.”