(CNN) — Chris Christie said Monday that while the moderators of the last GOP presidential debate did a poor job, he and his fellow Republican candidates should not get to control the debate format.
The New Jersey governor, whose most memorable moment in the CNBC debate came as he slammed the moderators for asking about fantasy football, took to the airwaves to suggest that he wasn’t concerned about the handling of the debates.
While representatives from the GOP presidential campaigns met Sunday evening to discuss ways to reform the debate process, Christie said debate negotiations should stay in the hands of the Republican National Committee.
“That doesn’t mean that I want us, the candidates, controlling the debate, the format and having everybody negotiate. We’ll never agree,” Christie said on CNN’s “New Day,” referring to the RNC’s decision to cancel an upcoming NBC/Telemundo-sponsored debate. “The RNC has done a good job on this. They took steps against NBC when they felt they had gotten out of line. I think we should allow the RNC to continue doing what they’re doing.”
Christie criticized CNBC moderator John Harwood for treating the debate like “an interview,” but said the adversarial forum still shed light on the candidates.
“The third debate wasn’t awful. A lot of the questions were bad, but you know what you learned a lot about those candidates on that stage too — how you can handle going back and forth,” Christie said. “The presidency is almost never scripted, so we shouldn’t have those debates scripted either.”
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2015 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (PHOTO: CNN)
