Montage: CNBC Republican Debate Moderator John Harwood, Not a Fan of Republicans

Meet John Harwood, the moderator of tonight’s CNBC debate. Harwood is both CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent and a New York Times reporter. He’s also known for his habit of beating up on conservatives.

CNBC viewers know him as the occasional panelist on “Squawk Box,” where he frequently clashes with the show’s more free-market hosts, Joe Kernen and Becky Quick. In one such episode, Harwood argued ObamaCare critics aren’t smart enough to know what health-care reforms will actually reduce costs. 

Harwood more recently took to Twitter to defend Hillary Clinton from charges she mishandled classified material on her personal server. “Petraeus gave info he knew classified to someone he knew unauthorized to see it,” he tweeted. “No allegation yet HRC did anything like that.”

When Republicans passed a budget in 2013 that President Obama vetoed, Harwood said the blame for the resulting shutdown sat squarely with Republicans. He also mocked Congress for seeking budget reforms in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, calling the expectations worthy of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

In a recent one-on-one with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), he asked how he could advance such non-interventionist economic policy when historians will write that government — via the likes of Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama — “saved America” from another Great Depression. 

In advance of tonight’s debate, we’ve compiled this short highlight reel of some of his sharpest anti-GOP attacks. Enjoy.