RNC tries to intimidate debate moderators and journalists

Since now only the right wing National Review will moderate the next debate, the Democratic National Committee should demand the FCC require that it be treated - and paid for - as a political advertisement.

Newsmax - The Republican National Committee says it's suspending its partnership with NBC News and its properties and won't allow the network to co-host a presidential primary debate scheduled for February.

The letter from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to NBC News chief Andrew Lack comes after this week's heavily criticized debate on CNBC.

"The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future," Priebus said in the letter. "We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns."

Preibus said that Wednesday's CNBC debate "was conducted in bad faith. We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance."

"Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness," Priebus added. "That was not the case.  Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive.

"The first question directed to one of our candidates asked if he was running a comic book version of a presidential campaign, hardly in the spirit of how the debate was billed."

He accused the CNBC moderators of engaging in "gotcha" questions that were "petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates.

"What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates’ policies and ideas," Priebus said.

The RNC tells NBC it will still hold a debate as scheduled on Feb. 26 with its other planned media partner, National Review.