EDITOR'S NOTE: A Justice investigation has found that one section of this article includes plagiarism. 

The plagiarized section reads: "At the event, Obama wondered how the GOP presidential candidates would handle foreign adversaries if they couldn’t handle CNBC debate moderators. 'They say, ‘Obama’s weak.’ ... They say, ‘When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out.’ And then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators. 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.'" This excerpt comes from a Nov. 3, 2015 article in Business Insider, titled "Obama mocks Republicans for complaining about CNBC: How are you going to deal with Putin?"

We have chosen to keep this article online because the opinions and arguments presented are original work. The plagiarized sections are presenting empirical support for those opinions without rephrasing the information into the author's own words. The Justice condemns plagiarism in all formats.

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On Oct. 28, CNBC hosted the highly controversial third Republican presidential debate. The moderators were criticized throughout the night by the candidates for their attempts to have the candidates go on the offensive against each other, their attempt to ask questions about debunked scandals meant to make the candidates look bad instead of discussing important issues and the open contempt that the moderators exuded toward the presidential candidates.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) received the biggest applause of the night, and the highest line score that pollster Frank Luntz said he ever recorded, when he called out CNBC’s moderators and the mainstream media, stating that the “questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media … Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues —contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and why ... the questions being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other.”

Cruz felt that, compared with the Democratic debate, in which candidates were asked to describe how Republicans hated each candidate more than the next and there was no scrutiny over the financing of their plans, the Republican debate contained an element of unfairness.

After the debate, the Republican presidential field and the Republican National Committee fiercely criticized CNBC for how it conducted itself. The candidates even went so far as to band together in an attempt to make future debate formats fairer while the RNC suspended its coming debate with NBC News, CNBC’s sister network.

On Nov. 2, President Obama criticized the response of the Republican candidates to the debate while speaking at a fundraiser in New York City.

At the event, Obama wondered how the GOP presidential candidates would handle foreign adversaries if they couldn’t handle CNBC debate moderators. “They say, ‘Obama’s weak.’ ... They say, ‘When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out.’ And then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators. 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.”

There are two significant problems with President Obama’s statement and criticisms of the Republican response to the debate.

First, the questions asked of the candidates during the presidential debate indeed deserved to be criticized. There is nothing wrong with tough questions — personally, that is what I expect and desire from debates. Indeed, several “tough” questions were asked, including queries about H-1B visas — non-immigrant visas designed to allow U.S. employers to employ foreign professionals in specialty occupations for a certain period of time — and the candidates’ tax plans. Yet the problem with the moderators’ questions is not that they were tough but that they were intended to make the candidates attack one another and that they dripped with contempt for the candidates’ positions and general worldview. 

The moderators began the debate by asking each candidate to reveal their biggest weakness, what is universally acknowledged as the worst job interview question of all time. The second question was posed to front-runner Donald Trump, asking whether he was running “a comic book version of a presidential campaign.” I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but to begin the debate with such a contemptuous question was condemnable. Debates are supposed to be about discussing the candidates’ views and policy positions, not questioning the very legitimacy of their campaigns. The moderators should have asked Trump about his positions and whether his lack of background would prevent him from successfully holding executive office, not mock his entire campaign from the outset.

Most of the questions directed toward Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) were about exaggerated supposed scandals rather than his actual policy positions, including poor management of his finances and his missing of Senate votes. When he was finally asked about his tax plan, moderator John Harwood accused Rubio of offering a tax plan that was heavily tilted toward the rich. When Rubio corrected him and said that lower-income taxpayers receive a higher percentage of the plan’s benefits than wealthy taxpayers, Harwood stated that the Tax Foundation backed up his assertion about Rubio’s tax plan. Yet Harwood himself had previously tweeted on Oct. 14 that this was false: “CORRECTING earlier tweet: Tax Foundation says Rubio benefits lowest 10% proportionally more (55.9) than top 1% (27.9%).”

In fact, Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, publicly corrected Harwood on Twitter during the debate, writing that “Rubio was right about his plan. Poor get larger tax benefit than the rich.”

Debates are supposed to be about the candidates and their defense of their policies, not the moderators’ views of them.

Critics of the Republican response to the debate point to the fact that Ted Cruz claimed a question asked of him about the debt limit was unfair. But that is not what the question actually asked of Cruz: One of the moderators, Carl Quintanilla, asked Cruz if his opposition to the recent budget deal demonstrated that he was not a “problem solver.” When Cruz went on to attack the media in his applause winning response, Quintanilla pushed back by claiming, “I asked you about the debt limit and I got no answer.” Such was not the case.

Other examples of bias abound, including when Former Governor Mike Huckabee was asked whether he thought Trump was someone with “the moral authority to unite the country,” but they all lead back to the main point that the moderators did not ask tough questions, but rather questions contemptuous of the candidates and their positions. As a Nov. 3 Federalist article read, “As the CNBC debate illustrated, apparatchiks like Harwood have no shame posing as unbiased moderators because they believe their gotcha questions are unadulterated ‘reality.’ Bernie Sanders will never be asked if he’s running a ‘Leninist version of the presidency’ and Hillary will never be asked if she’s running the ‘Nixonian version of the presidency’ because the same antipathy just isn’t there for Democrats.”

The second problem of President Obama’s critique of the Republican candidates has to do with his inference that the candidates are ill-equipped to deal with the likes of Russian president Vladimir Putin; mainly, that he is no position to criticize others when it comes to Russia. 

As was written in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 2, “the U.S. government ... was surprised by Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Crimea, surprised by his invasion of eastern Ukraine, surprised by his plan to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, and surprised by his intervention in Syria,” allowing him to conduct strikes to support the positions of the Assad regime. In response, on Oct. 30 President Obama announced the deployment of a whopping 50 U.S. special forces soldiers to assist Kurdish troops who are fighting Islamic State.

The United States has been outmaneuvered by Russia at every step in Putin’s mission to re-expand Russian influence around the world. Putin allowed for a chemical weapons disarmament plan (which ended up with dastardly results) in Syria that went against U.S. interests instead of a military strike by the United States in 2013, invaded Crimea in the face of a weak U.S. response, and has now repositioned Russia as a major player in the Middle East, due to the aforementioned examples as well as arms and other deals with Israel, Egypt, Bahrain and possibly Saudi Arabia, while the United States has simply sat back, watched and continuously asserted that it is Putin who is weak.

As such, it seems President Obama isn’t in a position to tell others whether they are competent enough to deal with Russia. Moreover, China’s actions in the South China Sea have also largely gone against U.S. wishes, although the United States’ dealings with China are not in as bad a state as the ones with Russia. President Obama enjoyed strong showings in the presidential debates when he was elected in 2008 and 2012, so it is possible that presidential debates are not always good indicators of future foreign policy success. 

In future debates, moderators should ask the GOP candidates sincere, serious questions about their foreign policy positions. Then the people can decide whether or not they’ll be able to take on the challenges this country will have to deal with in the coming years.