Former Virginia senator and current Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb doesn’t feel like he got enough attention at Tuesday night’s debate because it was “rigged” in favor of two of the five candidates standing atop CNN’s stage. *coughs* Hillary Clinton *coughs* Bernie Sanders *hacks up a lung*
Thursday morning, Webb sat down to discuss his foreign policy ideas with the Council on Foreign Relations during a live-streamed broadcast on the organization’s YouTube channel. Before the thrilling talking points were uttered, however, the moderator commented on Webb’s lack of exposure by CNN and invited him to elaborate more on what he said at the debate. Instead, he attacked the event and those who hosted it, albeit in terms less specific than those of fellow candidate Martin O’Malley.
“That debate was, I’m going to be very frank, rigged in terms of who was going to get the time on the floor by the way that Anderson Cooper was selecting people to supposedly respond to something someone else said,” Webb explained. “I even turned around to Bernie Sanders at one point and said, ‘Bernie! Say my name, will you? Just say my name!'”
Aside from Cooper, Sanders and Clinton, Webb never called out any of the people in charge of the debate by name. There were no O’Malley-esque, passive-aggressive insults slung at Democratic National Convention Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, for example. Still, the ex-Virginia senator felt compelled to explain his apparent anger — despite being unable to kill anyone.
“It’s very difficult to win a debate when you don’t have the opportunity to speak with the same amount of time on issues as the others did.”
Check out the clip above, via the Council on Foreign Relations.
[h/t Council on Foreign Relations]
[Image via screengrab]
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