Our corrupt Washington DC/New York media again tried to mess with the Republican presidential field.

While every other Republican remained publicly silent, frontrunner Donald Trump got his closest rival, Dr. Ben Carson, to join with him and together they stood up and said, “No.”

This kept Trump in the headlines and at the top of the news cycle throughout yesterday afternoon and this morning. And now we’ve learned that Trump and Carson won. The DC/NY media agreed to the frontrunners’ demands.

Does anyone in the weak-kneed Republican Establishment, or among the bubbled-morons in the Punditocracy, have any more questions about why The Donald appears to be coasting to the Republican nomination for President of the United States?

Anyone?

Anyone?

CNBC, which is part of the same NBC News network that openly partnered with a Democrat political data firm; that funneled more than a half-billion dollars to two pro-Hillary propaganda outlets (Vox and BuzzFeed); that turned their entire network over to the Clinton campaign for five days last week, thought it would pull a fast one and expand the upcoming Republican presidential debate from 2 hours to 3 hours.

The Hill reports that all the GOP candidates would prefer a two-hour debate, and for obvious reasons. The longer the left-wing media has to interrogate our candidates, the more likely it is the media will score for Hillary. Candidates are also more likely to make a mistake as the hours drag on.

CNBC also wanted to kill the opportunity for the candidates to have an opening and closing statement — which is also an obvious political move on the part of NBC News. The media wants to define our candidates as racist, crazy and stupid, and the best way to do this is to not let them get their message out with opening and closing remarks.

The Hill:

The campaign source added that the Trump campaign was the main driver behind the complaints about the length of the debate. “People realized we got the short end of the stick when the Democrats had a 2 minute opening and a 90 second closing [during their debate], so they had three and a half minutes to a 15 million person audience of an infomercial,” the source said. “They get a commercial, we get ‘The Hunger Games.’ ” That frustration turned into the letter from Carson and Trump, first reported by NBC News, where the top two in the GOP presidential polls specifically threatened to pull out.

Read that last line again. Look who publicly stood up to the media. Look who punched back by threatening to boycott the debate and used their leverage as frontrunners to get CNBC to back down.

This morning CNBC caved and agreed to a two-hour debate. The RNC also believes the candidates will get their opening and closing statements.

Let me put this as simply as possible for the GOPSmartSet-impaired: The Republicans will not win the White House in 2016 with yet another “electable” squish. We need a standard-bearer who is not only willing to stand up to the media but who also knows how to prevail against the media. And we need this for two reasons…

In the exact same way they did with the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012, the DC media is a political enemy working in tandem with the Hillary Clinton campaign. In order to win, our Republican nominee must treat the DC media like what it is: a branch of the Democrat National Committee. The public doesn’t make hapless losers president. If our candidate attempts to appease the media, the public will disqualify him as weak. If our candidate allows the media to forever keep him on defense, the public will disqualify him as incompetent.

Strength and competence wins the respect of voters and by extension their confidence and their votes. And right now, while Establishment candidates like Jeb Bush go full-Beta, the only Republican candidate showing both strength and competence is Donald Trump.

Trump is in command. To begin with, unlike the other GOP candidates, he and Carson (who is also winning by standing up to the DC media) had the foresight so seize this moment as an opportunity to score. He’s out-maneuvering the media at every turn. He is not allowing the media to define him.

After two cycles of watching the “most electable” Republican bow, scrape and lose to the media, the Republican base knows that this is how you win presidential elections.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC