Kurtz: CNBC Mods ‘Had a Worse Night than the N.Y. Mets’

[excerpt] 
MACCALLUM: “Howard Kurtz is a FOX News media analyst and he joins me now. So, Howard, you must had a field day watching this, as you do every debate, last night. And because, you are looking at how the media is doing. So, when you saw that question that Harwood gave right out of the gate, what was your response? 
KURTZ: “I was shaking my head and I shook my head pretty often for two hours. The CNBC moderators had a worse night than the New York Mets, Martha.”
MACCALLUM: “That’s hard to do.”
KURTZ: “I mean, this was a train wreck, it is hard to do. I felt many of the questions to be condescending, snide, hostile and borderline insulting. And so, they basically set up Ted Cruz, and on another point Marco Rubio to bash the media because it reinforces the notion that the mainstream press is not fair to Republican candidates.”
MACCALLUM: “Yeah. You know it struck me, Howard, watching it. You know, we all are aware of, you know sort of the — the leanings that different media networks have, right? So, when you go in there for debate, a debate — and we talked about this so much working on our own debates, you know, it’s a different format. It’s a different environment, the debate environment, and what you really want when you come out of one of these things, I think as a media organization is to have people say wow. They were fair. You know, they were — they were firm, they were tough, but they were fair. That’s what you want, everybody talking about the next day. And it didn’t feel like that was even what they wanted people to talk about the next day.”
KURTZ: “Yeah. As you know from moderating debate in Cleveland, you know, these are hard to do when they’re going to be missteps. And I’m all in favor of tough and aggressive questions. But, the CNBC moderators made it so personal in the way they framed those questions, we just saw John Harwood, the chief Washington correspondent, talked to Trump about it — comic book candidacy. And in another point, he asked Mike Huckabee if Donald Trump had the moral authority to unite the country. So this was not drilling down on policy or past statements, or contradictions.”
MACCALLUM: “Right.”
KURTZ: “It was kind of like attacking many of these candidates personally.”