Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said Friday that he "got to speak more" in Wednesday's CNBC debate than in the second debate last month in California — and disputed attacks on the Fox News moderators in the first debate in August.
"Frankly, I thought the first debate was good," the Ohio governor told Eric Bolling, who was substituting for Bill O'Reilly on
Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."
The first debate was hosted by Fox News in August in Cleveland. Donald Trump claimed afterward that hosts Bret Baier, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly did not treat him fairly.
The second GOP debate was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. It was co-hosted by CNN.
After Wednesday's CNBC debate at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the moderators were slammed by many candidates for reasons ranging from asking petty, non-substantive questions to posing queries that sought to embarrass the contenders.
The fallout led Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Friday to suspend NBC from hosting its February debate at the University of Houston.
The debate will still be held with National Review, Priebus said. It had been scheduled to include Telemundo, NBC's Spanish-language network.
In his Fox News interview, Kasich disputed front-runner Donald Trump's assertion that he was on the board of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street powerhouse, when it collapsed in 2008 during the financial crisis.
"He said I was on the board of Lehman Brothers. I ran a two-man office in Columbus, Ohio," Kasich said. "If I bankrupted Lehman Brothers from a two-man office I should be pope — not president."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.