Having successfully pressured CNBC into limiting the third Republican debate Wednesday to two hours, Donald Trump may soon propose a new condition.
“If we’re having a Republican debate, maybe every moderator should show that they vote Republican,” the GOP front-runner told a sea of supporters Thursday in Reno, Nev., less than 24 hours after he and his opponents were peppered with pointed questions by CNBC’s now highly-criticized trio of moderators.
“I guarantee these moderators are not big Republican voters,” Trump added. “Why should we have these people that hate everything we stand for and, I won’t mention his name, but the questions were so nasty.”
“It’s something… we should think about,” the billionaire repeated, piggybacking off a supporter’s suggestion that every moderator must prove they’re a registered Republican.
Nearly every GOP candidate on stage Wednesday condemned the moderators’ conduct either during or after the debate. Later that evening, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the host network “should be ashamed of how [the] debate was handled.”
One of Trump’s biggest supporters, however, said the moderators were just “doing their job.”
“Just keep tough, and smart, and keep going,” Trump’s wife, Melania, responded when asked by a reporter in the post-debate spinroom if the moderators had been “unfair or hard.”
Trump, who dropped to second in the Washington Examiner’s post-debate presidential power rankings, is slated to arrive in Norfolk, Va., on Halloween for a campaign rally aboard the USS Wisconsin. His campaign announced Thursday that he has officially qualified for the ballot in both Nevada in Kentucky, which will hold their respective caucuses next February and March.
