Republican presidential debate moderator Megyn Kelly revealed what Gov. Chris Christie told her during a commercial break for the fourth GOP debate on Wednesday evening.
“All over the internet last night was a video that went viral of somebody in the balcony filming Chris Christie coming over to yours truly during a break at the end of the first hour and kind of getting up in my grill, and there was all sorts of speculation about what was happening there,” Ms. Kelly said during an episode of her podcast, according to multiple media reports.
“I will tell you what was happening there. It was not off the record. He was pissed off. He was mad that he wasn’t getting enough questions, and he said, ‘I made it up at this stage and I haven’t been able to speak in a while and, you know, I should have been brought in on that last debate.'”
Ms. Kelly recalled telling Mr. Christie, who is polling at around 2 percent, that “we’re coming to you ... in the second hour.”
Because of “all the arguing” on the debate stage among the candidates, the “even distribution of questions got mucked up,” she said.
“But number one, he was right that in the last run, he had been excluded, and the reason that happened is because we let them fight in the first 40 minutes of the debate, and therefore that comes at the expense of something, and where you insert yourself, Chris Christie, on this earlier fight or—it’s all at the expense of something else that’s coming,” she continued. “Which is fine, we were not wedded to our rundown, we had like 40 questions going out there, our goal was to ask ten of them, you know, in a perfect world.”
Elaborating, she noted that Mr. Christie has low poll numbers but was still given a considerable amount of time to speak.
“Having said all that, I knew very well that Christie was going to get asked a Trump question having to do with immigration at the top of the next hour, so it was totally fair to him, and he’s polling at 2 percent, okay?“ Ms. Kelly said. ”In no debate ever, and I’ve now done six of them, have we given as many questions to the guy who’s at 3 percent as to the person who’s in the lead, at least amongst the candidates on the stage.”
The former Fox News anchor noted that for the fourth debate, Mr. Ramaswamy got 22 minutes, Mr. DeSantis got 21 minutes, Ms. Haley got 17 minutes, and Mr. Christie had 16 minutes and 52 seconds.
At one point during the debate, Mr. Christie complained about being ignored during the first part of the event. “I’m usually not somebody who gets missed, but okay, let’s go,” the former governor said.
But the fourth debate, meanwhile, may have done little to sway voters.
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President Trump’s campaign has signaled that he will not attend any of the Republican primary debates, citing his significant lead in the polls over the other candidates. Instead, according to the campaign, the Republican National Committee (RNC) should dedicate its resources to unifying behind him and trying to defeat President Joe Biden and Democrats in the 2024 election.It was announced this week that CNN will host the next two Republican presidential debates in Iowa and New Hampshire on Jan. 10 and Jan. 21, respectively. The moderators for the events have not been named yet.
Candidates will be invited to partake in the New Hampshire event if they get at least 10 percent in three separate national polls or three New Hampshire polls of Republican primary voters, the network said, saying the polls have to “meet CNN’s standards for reporting.”
President Trump, Ms. Haley, and Mr. DeSantis have reached 10 percent in at least three qualifying polls, said CNN.
