(CNN) — Donald Trump dismissed Tuesday President Barack Obama’s mocking of the the GOP presidential candidates’ criticism of the CNBC moderators in the last debate.
Trump, whose campaign decided to continue dealing directly with the TV networks rather than forming a united front with other presidential campaigns, said he “doesn’t care too much” about the debate format, instead knocking Obama’s handling of the country.
“They’ve been hitting me one way or the other. I just want to have the debates. I like the debates. They can ask tough questions. … I just want to answer the questions and be done with it, frankly,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Of Obama’s criticism, Trump added, “He can’t handle the country. He’s doing a terrible job running the country.”
Obama ripped into the GOP’s field of 2016 hopefuls on Monday night, noting that while they’ve knocked him for being “weak” on the international stage, “it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators.”
“Let me tell you, if you can’t handle those guys, then I don’t think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you,” Obama quipped at a Democratic fundraiser.
Trump also addressed his 2016 competitor Ben Carson’s surge in the polls, noting that Carson “just doesn’t have the experience” or the “temperament” to lead the country on the economic front and international stage.
Carson has now overtaken Trump in the two most recent national polls conducted by CBS/New York Times and NBC/Wall Street Journal. The NBC/WSJ poll released Monday night, but conducted largely before the last debate, put Carson ahead by 6 percentage points.
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