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For the CNBC employees who boarded a charter plane right after Wednesday's bruising GOP debate, the redeye flight was physically smooth but emotionally turbulent. People were exhausted, but also rattled and worried. "We were shell-shocked," one source said. The poor reviews were piling up - declaring CNBC the biggest loser of the night - and the moderators Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick knew more would be published by the time the flight landed in New York. So for some flyers, it was a sleepless night. But there was some laughter and some liquor to lighten the mood - and some...

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus stated that CNBC won’t moderate another Republican debate after its “crap sandwich,” and that all future debates will be “re-evaluated” on Thursday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.

The third GOP presidential debate, held Wednesday evening in Colorado, revealed two key truths: The political media has declared war on several Republican candidates, and the candidates have declared war on the political media. The GOP's gripes against the media are legion. Over the past several election cycles, they have reached a fever pitch, with the presidential debates largely to blame. The problem, from a Republican standpoint, was epitomized by Candy Crowley's intervention on behalf of President Obama during his crucial second debate with Mitt Romney in 2012. Reeling from a limp and lackluster performance the first time around, Obama...

Unlike almost all conservative commentators and a fair number of liberal ones, Ohio Governor John Kasich was quite satisfied wit the job done last night by the CNBC debate moderators. Brittany M. Hughes of the Media Research Center: The presidential hopeful told MRCTV he “thought they did a good job,” saying he was “very appreciative of how they did their job.” "I had time" to speak and discuss the issues - and, this time, the debate "wasn't a circus," Kasich said.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter weighed in Wednesday night to all the CNBC debate haters - lay off the "ridiculous" attempts to "imitate" Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Some of the questions by the CNBC moderators on Wednesday got significant boos from the debate audience and criticism from Republicans. Here's what Coulter had to say: Complaints about the CNBC moderators are a ridiculous attempt to imitate Trump. Compare it question by question to the other 2 debates. - Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) GOP's media bashing is getting boring.CNBC Qs not measurably different from CNN or FNC. They're just imitating Trump. - Ann...

Among the fiercest critics of CNBC's debate telecast on Wednesday night were its rivals at Fox News. Fox is hosting the next GOP debate, on November 10, on its smaller sister channel Fox Business. -snip- Cavuto, Maria Bartiromo, and Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker will moderate the prime time debate.

[Note: This comment was written immediately following the third televised Republican presidential debate in Boulder, Colo., on Wednesday night.] IT WAS, hands down, the most arresting moment of the Republican debate in Colorado. One of the CNBC moderators, Carl Quintanilla, asked Senator Ted Cruz whether his opposition to the just-announced congressional deal raising the federal debt limit demonstrates that he's "not the kind of problem-solver American voters want." Cruz's response was to turn the tables on the moderators, blasting them for the hostility toward the candidates that oozed from virtually every question they had asked so far. Then, with devastating...

Wednesday night’s epic s*itshow of a debate highlighted one fact beyond all others: if Republicans are to win the presidency in 2016, their main opponent will not be Hillary Clinton, but the established media.

CNBC said its Wednesday-night telecast of a debate among Republican candidates for U.S. President lured an average of 14 million viewers, making it the most-watched broadcast on the NBCUniversal-owned cable outlet in its history.CNBC’s audience for the telecast was significantly lower than the crowds lured by Fox News Channel and CNN for similar events. A Republican debate broadcast in August by Fox News attracted an average of 24 million viewers, while a Republican debate broadcast in September by CNN won an average of 23.1 million viewers.For CNBC, however, the numbers were meaningful. The network said it the broadcast of the...

How did they do last night? The big loser was CNBC and the media, of course, but I'm talking about the candidates. BTW, "Who do you think won the debate?" is not the same thing as "Who do you like the most?" What I think: Excellent: Cruz (1st place), Rubio (2nd place), Christie (3rd place) Good to very good (alphabetical order): Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee, Paul, Trump Poor (alphabetical order): Bush, Kasich Regardless of performance and standing, these people should leave the stage: Bush, Carson, Graham, Huckabee, Jindal, Kasich, Pataki, Paul, Santorum What say you?

I dedicate the lead of this column to thanking CNBC for displaying its rank liberal bias in last night's GOP presidential debate for all the world to see. In relative terms, "all the world" is not that far off if you consider last night's audience size compared with the network's usually paltry ratings. The more people who saw this charade from the network's alleged moderators the better for America. My first reaction as this spectacle unfolded was muted outrage, shaking my head that this atrophied arm of the mainstream liberal media would show its colors so overtly, without any pretense...

Here's the one takeaway from the GOP presidential primary debate from Wednesday evening — the hypocrisy of the liberal progressive media was called out. If there was an overall loser for the debate, it was collectively the CNBC moderators of Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick, and John Harwood. The obvious winners were the ten GOP candidates who took on the moderators, attacking them for their blatantly biased line of questioning and for the most part, didn’t fall into the trap of the circular firing squad. As Senator Marco Rubio pointed out, no one broached the subject of absent votes in the...

The lingering question from last night’s Republican presidential debate is not for the candidates or their party, it is for the press. And that question is: Is that you? The conduct of CNBC and its panel of inquisitors – is that you? Is that what has become of American journalism? Because those weren’t reporters, they were insolent idiots. Self-important crusaders engaged in a condescending and partisan attack on people they have dehumanized through their evident disgust. If that is the role to which American journalism has devolved, if the conduct and questions of the CNBC panelists seem reasonable to the...

"The Republicans perceived some of the questions asked by the CNBC moderators as attempts to embarrass them or create controversy. And so much of two-hour debate turned into a media-bashing session.... "Republicans often criticize the press for being too liberal and aligned against conservatives. But it's not clear what any of the candidates gained by these attacks, since nearly all 10 of them at one point took a jab at CNBC."

In one moment, Senator Ted Cruz managed to do what no other candidate for the Republican nomination for president has done to this point: unite Republicans. He did so by pushing back against the ridiculously biased questions presented by CNBC moderators. The Hollywood Reporter transcribes: “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” said the U.S. senator from Texas, instantly earning applause.“This is not a cage match,” he continued. “Look at the questions. ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain;’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math;’ ‘John...

It’s hard to see how Jeb Bush recovers from his self-inflected wound at Wednesday’s CNBC Republican debate in Boulder when he went after Marco Rubio just after the young senator had hit one out of the park. Rubio was defending himself from an editorial in the Sun Sentinel calling on Marco to stop “ripping off” the public and quit the Senate because of his poor attendance record. Rubio responded that John Kerry and Barack Obama had been even more truant from the Senate while running for president and the paper had not only ignored that, but given these men...

The insurgency conducted last night by the GOP field in standing up to biased, sneering questions from CNBC’s panel has stung the NBC Universal (and parent Comcast) empire deeply enough that it is striking back. Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters reports: "This got a little revolting tonight," MSNBC's Chris Matthews lamented to colleague Chris Jansing in a post-debate special edition of Hardball Wednesday night. Matthews was chagrined with Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) scoring points with debate audience by attacking the liberal media. "I thought that the candidates were trying to get votes, and they were using...

Frank Luntz says he's never seen a line score as high as the answer Ted Cruz gave when he called out the CNBC moderators for their liberal bias. Not only did it score high, but several people in the room moved towards Ted Cruz because of it, with one former Ben Carson supporter saying that now Ted Cruz is her guy. Watch: Luntz Focus Group on 3rd GOP Debate (video)

By getting away from his talking points. Boulder, Colo. Ted Cruz went a long way Wednesday night in making the case for himself as the conservative consensus candidate. It didn't hurt that he used his first extended answer in the debate to excoriate the journalists asking the questions.Ted Cruz Attacks Media at CNBC Debate (video)The righteous rant got one of the loudest rounds of applause of the night from the crowd at the University of Colorado. It was a smart move for Cruz to take time to go after the media since the CNBC moderators were, indeed, asking questions right...

Ted Cruz stole the spotlight on social media as he unleashed a tirade on CNBC debate moderators and media in general for creating tension among the candidates and not addressing "substantive issues"....The Texas senator scored the highest activity level - total number of views, shares, likes, and mentions a candidate receives on social media networks - for the night, according to Zoomph, an analytics platform that tracks real-time data on social media.He had 27,500 engagements on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google+ by the end of the debate, while Rubio followed with 21,000 engagements. Bush was third on social media engagement...