The CNBC-moderated debate became a debate about CNBC, as various candidates and the audience turned the tables on the network’s three moderators.

The repeated bursts of anger and anarchy were prompted, in part, by questions from the moderators that veered, at times, beyond sharp into contentiousness. By the end of the first hour, the audience seemed to be siding with the candidates, booing when CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla seemed to play gotcha with Ben Carson about his past work for a questionable company.


Taking on the media is a time-honored tradition in Republican debates, from Ronald Reagan in 1980 to Newt Gingrich in 2012. But those were generally individual outbursts. On Wednesday night, the tension was palpable throughout the encounter and across the stage, a theme that may have dashed CNBC’s plans to use the night to showcase a broad array of its own anchors and introduce itself to millions of new viewers.

On Twitter, four of the top five moments involved times when candidates criticized the moderators or the media. And on Facebook, the top social moment was an attack on the questions being asked.

The pattern was established very early by Donald Trump, spurred by a question about his tax plan from CNBC’s John Harwood that suggested the businessman was running a “comic-book” campaign. Trump angrily proclaimed that the network’s own star host, Larry Kudlow, had praised his tax plan.

Soon after, Texas senator Ted Cruz picked up the cudgel, declaring, in response to a question from Quintanilla about raising the debt ceiling, “Let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match . . . The questions shouldn’t be getting people to tear into each other.”

Cruz, his voice rising in indignation, cited Harwood’s “comic-book” question to Trump and one from CNBC’s Becky Quick to Carson that declared that his flat-tax plan wouldn’t bring in nearly as much revenue as he claimed. After Cruz waxed on about a double standard between Democratic and Republican debates, Quintanilla seemed visibly irritated, and he and Harwood each refused to give Cruz any extra time to answer the original question.

A few minutes later, they seemed to think better of it and did give Cruz the time. But the spuriousness of the decision left them open to further expressions of outrage by other candidates whenever the moderators tried to cut them off.

Even in their closing statements, several of the candidates went after the media and the network. Trump used his final seconds to tout his negotiating abilities in forcing CNBC to limit the length of the debate despite its desire to make more ad revenue off a longer debate.

“I could stand up here all night. Nobody wants to watch three and a half or three hours. And I have to hand it to Ben [Carson],” Trump said. “They lost a lot of money, everybody said it couldn’t be done. And in about two minutes, I renegotiated it to two hours, so we could get the hell out of here.”

“Just for the record, the debate was always going to be two hours,” responded Harwood.

“That’s not right. That’s absolutely not right,” Trump responded.

The debate had barely wrapped up when Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus marched into the spin room and blasted the network. In a statement sent out soon after, Priebus said he was disappointed in the network moderators.

"Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC," Priebus said. "One of the great things about our party is that we are able to have a dynamic exchange about which solutions will secure a prosperous future, and I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”

CNBC spokesman Brian Steel defended the moderators.

"People who want to be President of the United States should be able to answer tough questions," Steel said in an email.

But the candidates seemed to join forces against the network.

"One thing that unified all the Republicans tonight was the disdain for the moderators," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul concluded after the debate. "I felt like we were all together in thinking that maybe the moderators got kind of carried away."

Jeb Bush's campaign manager Danny Diaz was spotted in the debate hall having a heated conversation with CNBC producers while the contest was still going on. Diaz later told POLITICO that he "expressed my displeasure about the way the debate was managed and the amount of time [we got]."

Staffers from several competing networks relished in watching the meltdown, sending emails and texts saying the network was being “manhandled” and that the moderators had lost control.

"RETWEET if you think @FoxBusiness and @WSJ will put on a better debate than this #GOPDebate,” Fox host Neil Cavuto tweeted before the end of the debate.

The crush of criticism was clearly a blow to CNBC's efforts to use the debate as a way to win new viewers, from a gauzy opening photo montage to a series of network promotions emphasizing what Quintanilla, at the outset, called, “CNBC’s top experts in the markets and personal finance” and “the best team in business” journalism.

Before the debate, CNBC's efforts to showcase a large number of its on-air personalities during a disjointed preview discussion drew jeers on Twitter from reporters, political operatives and others who couldn’t stand the banter between the anchors, correspondents and pundits.

"The CNBC anchors are just desperately filling airtime with absolute nonsense to kill time,” conservative writer John Tabin tweeted.

"Please run vertical color bars until the debate starts,” wrote U.S. News and World Report’s managing editor for opinions Robert Schlesinger.

At one point in the hour between the two debates, correspondents debated how liberal the students in Colorado are. CNBC pundits made comments that, for the Beltway crowd, seemed obvious, such as “Jeb Bush needs a good night.”

“CNBC preshow illustrating why you don't hire tennis players to do color commentary on a football game,” wrote The New York Times’ Alex Burns.

But after the debate, reporters were surprised that CNBC cut away quickly to a show called "The Profit," leaving their post-debate coverage to an online livestream. Other networks filled the gap with commentary and analysis — some of it critical of CNBC.

Eliza Collins and Alex Isenstadt contributed to this story.

