Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Thursday that many people in the mainstream media privately think they’re smarter than political candidates and can’t wait for their chance to show it off.
“I don’t think it’s atypical from what you see among most people in the mainstream media, which is, you know, privately they believe they’re smarter than the people running, and they can’t wait for their chance to show off in front of their buddies by asking some question they think is going to embarrass, especially Republicans,” Mr. Rubio said on “Fox and Friends.”
Mr. Rubio and others had already taken issue with some of the lines of questioning at the GOP presidential debate in Colorado Wednesday, which aired on CNBC. The Florida Republican said during the debate that the mainstream media is effectively a super PAC for Democrats.
“I think the bigger frustration you saw is that all those candidates on the stage had prepared for a substantive debate — everyone was ready to talk about trade policy and the debt and tax policies. We were ready for that. Everybody was,” Mr. Rubio said.
“And then you get questions like the ones everybody got, which were clearly designed to either get us to fight against each other or to say something embarrassing about each other, about us, and then ask us to react,” he said. “And that’s what the purpose of these questions were, and it became irritating.”
“You go on a network that specializes in economic news and you get questions like some of the ones that were asked last night, and … real frustration begins to bubble over,” he said.
In a statement to the AP, NBC spokesman Brian Steel said: “People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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