Sean Spicer, communications director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), said his group is pushing back against the liberal media’s domination of Republican presidential primary debates, urging a new group of conservative journalists to moderate these forums and ask questions “focused on the issues that matter to conservatives and grassroots activists.”
Spicer spoke with Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg on Friday about new rules regarding the 2016 Republican presidential primary:
The party is actually going to have a greater say in our Republican primary debates. “For too long, it’s been the media that’s decided when we’re going to debate, who is going to be in the debate, what questions are going to be asked, what subjects are going to be forward.
Spicer noted that under the current system, “the liberal media does not have the interest of the party at hand…. You should not just have left-wing, liberal moderators asking questions of our candidates and determining that.” He added:
Some of the folks in the media try to prepare this as, ‘Oh, you guys don’t want to face tough questions. This has nothing to [sic] tough questions. Anyone who has listened to your show, or read Breitbart or The Daily Caller, knows that conservative media is a heckuva lot tougher than mainstream media.
But they’re focused on the issues that matter to conservatives and grassroots activists, as opposed to the left-wing liberals out there. And so one of the things that we recognize is that they have a voice in this process. And we need to get people from Newsmax, people from The Daily Caller, people from The Washington Examiner, people from Breitbart . . . legitimate conservative journalists need to have a voice in questioning the Republican candidates for the nomination.
This report, by Brendan Bordelon, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
