The Republican National Committee ended its debate partnership with the conservative magazine National Review on Thursday after it published an issue of the publication dedicated to showing voters why they shouldn't support Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump – a move the RNC said would keep the magazine from being an impartial GOP debate co-sponsor and moderator for its Feb. 25 debate in Houston.
"Tonight, a top official with the RNC called me to say that National Review was being disinvited. The reason: Our 'Against Trump' editorial and symposium. We expected this was coming. Small price to pay for speaking the truth about The Donald," National Review publisher Jack Fowler wrote in a blog post on the National Review website.
Fowler also noted, however, that he thought the RNC's decision was made prematurely, telling BuzzFeed in an email, "I would argue that the RNC should have waited for someone to complain, if someone was going to," Fowler said. "The presumption is that our moderator/participant would not have asked an intelligent/fair question." He added that the RNC is free to do what they like "and they can deprive [it] if they want to."
For their part, the RNC's spokesman, Sean Spicer, said that National Review was removed from the debate because the moderators "can't have a predisposition," The Hill reported.
On Thursday, National Review published an entire issue of the magazine with the sole goal of diminishing Trump's stature in the polls and will an increasing number of Republican and conservative power brokers, according to the Huffington Post. The magazine also published an editorial describing Trump as a "philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones." The editorial was supported by a collection of essays penned by prominent conservatives who make the case for dropping Trump.
Trump, per his usual, took to Twitter to criticize the publication.
National Review is a failing publication that has lost it's way. It's circulation is way down w its influence being at an all time low. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016
Very few people read the National Review because it only knows how to criticize, but not how to lead. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016
