Donald Trump says the upcoming Republican primary debate on CNBC should be two hours instead of the newly proposed three hours because it would be “unfair” to viewers’ since it’s “too much to watch.” But he believes they want to make it longer because they can make more money from advertisers thanks to the presence of The Donald.
Appearing “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” Thursday, Trump said the same thing is happening for CNBC that happened with CNN. The Republican frontrunner explained “they sold the commercials for so much, and for so much money, it was going to be $4000 for a 30 second commercial, it ended up being 200,000 and 250,000.”
Trump said that because CNBC has already sold all of the commercial time, they want to increase the debate by an hour to sell more advertisements.
Trump criticized CNBC for lengthening the debate because it’s “unfair to the viewers because it’s too much, it’s too much to watch. And they’re doing to because they want to make more money.”
Trump continued to explained, “Well I spoke to Reince, and I spoke to the RNC and so have other people actually, and you know, they don’t like the idea because it’s unfair. It’s unfair to the viewers. I don’t care. I could stand for five hours. I could stand for ten hours but it’s unfair to the viewers.”
Trump insisted, “You know, the Democratic debate, if you look at it, that was two hours and it was too long, everybody was bored at the end. They want to make this much longer than that. So I think it’s really important that they make it a reasonable period of time.”
Trump said the all the Republican candidates “agreed to two hours and now all of a sudden yesterday, they came up with this additional long period of time, whatever it maybe. But it was originally agreed that it was two hours. I mean, the networks are making a fortune off this stuff. They never made money, they always lost money with it. Now they are making a fortuning, I wonder why. So you know, a little bit tough.”
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