Donald Trump will be a better debate host than many of the journalists the mainstream media have put up as moderators, Republican candidate Rick Santorum said Tuesday.
The real-estate tycoon, who is hosting the Newsmax ION Television 2012 Presidential Debate in Iowa on Dec. 27, will do better than the media personalities who have tried to turn the spotlight on themselves rather than the candidates and the issues in GOP debate so far, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania said.
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“Look and see who some of the mainstream media has put up,” Santorum told radio host Steve Malzberg. “Brian Williams I wasn’t comfortable with, and I had every right not to be, given the questions he asked — and Charlie Rose.
“You go down the list of all the people they’ve had, these reporters who have tried to make this debate about them and not about the candidates and what they believe in, and rearranging time to make sure the people that they wanted to have time, get time.
“I can’t see, in some cases, where Donald Trump would be any worse than what we get from the mainstream media,” he told Malzberg, who was filling in for Jeff Bolton on KLIF radio in Dallas.
“These debates have not reflected well on the media — there’s been a lot of ‘gotcha’ moments. There’s been a lot of steering questions to whoever the flavor of the month is. It’s been more about trying to create conflict instead of trying to create light and give candidates really an opportunity to explain their positions."
Santorum attacked previous debates for their “silly 30-second answers on how to solve world peace.”
“Those are the things that really agitate a lot of voters out there,” Santorum said.
Santorum claimed that some “80-90 percent” of people in the mainstream media will cast their vote for President Barack Obama at the election.
“They don’t really make any bones about hiding their opinion,” he said. “It used to be that the media may have quietly kept their own counsel and tried to do a reasonably fair job of reporting the news. Now they’re very explicit about the positions they take and the criticisms they level against conservatives."
But he praised Newsmax, saying he finds it to be “a credible news organization” that has “always treated me very fairly,” in interviews.
“If there are credible debates out there, I’m going to engage in those debates,” he said.
Santorum was among the first of the GOP candidates to accept the invitation for the debate, which will be aired a week before the Iowa caucuses. He joked that once he heard that Newt Gingrich had accepted, he wasn’t going to let the former House Speaker have the stage to himself.
One of the main points of his platform — to return manufacturing jobs to America — also is one of Trump’s big issues.
“If you look at all the plans that are out there, I have the plan that is focused on getting manufacturing back to this country. I’d cut the corporate tax completely out for domestic manufacturers -- that is in this several-point plan that will bring manufacturing back.
“If there is one note to Donald Trump on the economy, it’s what are we going to do to get the manufacturing base in this economy, get the jobs back from China and Mexico and other places?
“This is a great forum for me to highlight that — an issue that Trump and I happen to agree on.”
Santorum said he has gained ground in Iowa since pizza mogul Herman Cain dropped out of the race. “This is a wide-open field,” he said, adding that a Des Moines Register poll had shown that 60 percent of voters are likely to change their minds before the Jan.3 caucuses.
“There is no question that people are looking for a conservative who will shake things up and who has a track record of making a big difference everywhere he has gone and served, and I’ve done that.
“A lot of folks yesterday, simple folks, came up and said, ‘I was for Herman Cain and I wanted to come and see you.’
“We’ve had bigger crowds than we’ve ever had in the last couple of days here in Iowa . . . I had 100 people in Sioux City, 150 in Council Bluffs. Those are crowds I haven’t been seeing and that’s exciting for me to get some momentum here on the ground.
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