Carly Fiorina's name has been appearing near the top of most major polls after her star turn in the "happy hour" debate earlier this month, but she is frustrated over reports that she still may not rank highly enough to appear on the main stage at the CNN debate on Sept. 16.
"I guess I don't understand why media companies are deciding who Republican voters hear from," Fiorina told
Fox News' "America's Newsroom" host Martha MacCallum, pointing out that the Republican National Committee should be in charge of the arrangements.
"It's frustrating, to say the least, if CNN is putting their thumb on the scale," said Fiorina. "I'm also comfortably within the top five in virtually every statewide poll that has been taken since that debate."
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Instead of averaging current poll results, CNN is dating its polls back to July 16, when Fiorina was still struggling to get attention. The problem with that, Fiorina told MacCallum, is there were "so many polls in July and so few in August, and that's how they're putting their thumb on the scale."
She said she's not surprised that other candidates aren't coming to her defense, as "it's a competitive game," but still, polls are a "snapshot in time" and the debates should reflect that.
But even if Fiorina won't be on the main stage, she said she's hearing "tremendous support for my candidacy, so I'm going to keep going."
Fiorina on Friday also
spoke out about Hillary Clinton's comments comparing GOP candidates' views on women to those held by terrorists, calling them "outrageous" but still typical of her and other Democrats.
"Democrats are continually describing Republicans as extreme when the truth is it is Democrats who are extreme," said Fiorina. "They are extreme as she continues to defend Planned Parenthood ... it's unclear she has ever had the courage to watch these videotapes and see what Planned Parenthood is doing."
Also, Democrats and Clinton are playing the "war on women" card over and over again, and it's no longer an effective ploy, she told MacCallum.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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