A triumphant Donald Trump claimed credit for forcing CNBC to shorten Wednesday night’s presidential debate from three hours to two hours.
After clashing with the debate moderators at several moments during the debate, the party front-runner used his closing remarks to hammer the network, accusing them of seeking to profit off the candidates.
{mosads}“These folks at CNBC, they had [the debate] down to three, three and a half hours,” Trump said. “I just read today in the New York Times — $250,000 for a 30-second ad. I went out and said it’s ridiculous, I could stand up here all night. Nobody wants to watch three and a half or three hours … and in two minutes I renegotiated it down to two hours so we can get the hell out of here.”
Several weeks before the debate, Trump and Ben Carson threatened to boycott if CNBC scheduled an event that lasted for more than two hours and didn’t allow the candidates opening and closing remarks.
“I have to hand it to Ben, he was with me on this. We called in, we said ‘that’s it, we’re not doing it,’” Trump said Wednesday night. “They lost a lot of money. Everybody said it couldn’t be done, everybody said it going to be three hours, three and a half including them.”
CNBC anchor John Harwood disputed Trump’s account.
“Just for the record, the debate was always going to be two hours,” he said.
The billinoiare businessman shot back: “That’s not right, that’s absolutely not right. You know that. That’s not right.”
It was one of several moments in which Trump tangled with the moderators.
Harwood opened the debate by mocking Trump’s campaign promises as coming from a “comic book,” and later said his tax plan had as good a chance of working as “flapping your arms and flying away from that podium.”
Becky Quick asked a question about his criticism of Mark Zuckerberg over immigration but Trump shut her down, claiming he has never been critical of the Facebook founder.
“Where did I come up with that?,” the co-moderator retorted.
“You people write this stuff, I don’t know,” Trump shot back.
Quick later referenced remarks she says she found on Trump’s website in which he was critical of Zuckerberg for advocating for more visas for foreign skilled laborers.