Americans and pundits will spend the next few days weighing who won Wednesday night’s Republican debate on CNBC. But the night’s loser was clear even before it started: the network itself, which started the main event late and asked questions that left even the candidates scratching their heads.

CNBC had set the main debate to begin at 8 p.m. But instead, CNBC anchors spent some 15 minutes talking about politics in a manner that demonstrated a light familiarity with the issues, and continued speaking even after the candidates were already waiting on stage. The aimless chatter lit the Twitter conversation on fire.

The delay sent New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof into a Twitter tizzy, saying that the network was operating on “CNBC time.”

It wasn’t just journalists on Twitter who took issue with the network’s tactics. When CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla asked Senator Ted Cruz a question about why he doesn’t support a deal that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets, Cruz used his time to instead bash the network for the kinds of questions that moderators had been asking .

“The questions that have been asked so far in the debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he said. “This is not a cage match. You look at the questions: ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”