Appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, presidential hopeful Ron Paul said he still doesn’t know why he was excluded from Fox News’ Sunday night Republican debate.
Paul was left off the GOP debate roster even though Paul and his supporters set a new one-day fundraising record, raked in nearly $20 million in the fourth quarter of last year — and got 10 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.
Rudy Giuliani, who got only 4 percent in Iowa, was included in the debate, along with John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee.
Leno told Paul on Monday night’s show: “I’m trying to figure out why Fox News chose not to put you on.”
“You know, we tried to find that out,” Paul replied. “But they didn’t return our call.”
A sympathetic Leno said: “You’re being extremely polite for something I think you got screwed over. I mean, I might not necessarily agree with you, but I think, as an American, we like to see everybody get an equal shot.”
Paul speculated that Fox “didn’t want to hear the message. Maybe they’re intimidated. Maybe they’re frightened. Maybe they didn’t want to hear the truth. Who knows?”
The Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcolm observed: “So Paul gets 10 percent in Iowa and gets excluded, but Rudy gets 4 percent and sits on the left end of the Fox Box desk. Hmmm.”
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