Ted Cruz hits Fox’s Wallace for ‘train wreck’ debate, pitches new idea for moderators

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is blaming Fox News’s Chris Wallace for what he called the “train wreck” that was Tuesday’s presidential debate and says journalists who claim “fake impartiality” shouldn’t be allowed to moderate future presidential debates. 

In a series of blistering Thursday morning tweets, Cruz argued that “everyone agrees Tuesday’s debate was a train wreck” and said “a major contributing fact was the moderator Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat, repeatedly interrupting to try to help Joe Biden.” 

1/x Everyone agrees Tuesday’s debate was a train wreck. A major contributing fact was the moderator Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat, repeatedly interrupting to try to help Joe Biden. The next debate is set to be moderated by a former intern to…Joe Biden. (And Ted Kennedy.)

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 1, 2020

2/x This is NUTS. And no Republican should allow this bias to continue in future elections.

I propose 2 simple, fair rules for future debates:

(1) GOP primary debates should be moderated by people who actually vote in a GOP primary. (Not Dem journalists who want GOP to lose.)

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 1, 2020

Wallace acknowledged in an interview the day after the debate that he was disappointed in the outcome. 

“I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks the way it did,” he told The New York Times.

Asked if Trump, who repeatedly interrupted both both Democratic nominee Joe Biden and the moderator, was responsible for derailing the debate, Wallace said, “Well, he certainly didn’t help,” but declined to elaborate further.

Cruz on Thursday also highlighted that the moderator of the second Trump-Biden debate scheduled for Oct. 15, Steve Scully, a host and producer for C-SPAN, was a mail-room intern for Biden in 1978 and worked in late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) media affairs office in 1979, according to Scully’s Wikipedia page.

Scully was 18 years old when he worked for those two Democrats and has since built a reputation as an evenhanded, unbiased journalist during nearly 30 years of working for C-SPAN, whose slogan is “Your unfiltered view of government.” 

The third presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 22 will be moderated by NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker.

Cruz on Thursday argued that 2020 should be the last election in which mainstream, establishment journalists should moderate primary and general election presidential debates.

“This is NUTS. And no Republicans should allow this bias to continue in future elections,” Cruz tweeted.

He is proposing instead that future GOP primary debates be moderated by people who vote in Republican primaries, and “not Dem journalists who want GOP to lose.” 

Cruz says presidential debates in 2024, the next presidential election cycle, should be commentators who are clear about their partisan and ideological affiliations, such as conservative talk radio host Mark Levin and MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who is also editor at large at The Nation magazine, a staunchly liberal publication.

“We should stop pretending obvious bias doesn’t exist. Instead, equalize & counter-balance it,” he tweeted.  

4/x Or Rush Limbaugh & Rachel Maddow.

Or Ben Shapiro & Chris Cuomo.

Both sides would take incoming & the debates would be real and substantive.

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 1, 2020

Cruz has stepped up his criticism of what he perceives as liberal media bias in recent days. He recently told a reporter that a sign of a constitutionalist judicial nominee is that person’s ability to withstand years of “withering criticism” from the media. 

He said last week that Trump should appoint to the Supreme Court someone who “has endured the withering criticism of the press and remained faithful nonetheless.”