Donald Trump and his supporters have accused the Republican National Committee of unfairly packing last weekend’s debate with donors who loudly booed the New York businessman throughout the night.
But the RNC is pushing back against that accusation. In a memo sent to committee members on Tuesday, RNC chief operation officer Sean Cairncross acknowledged they have “been accused of ‘stacking’ the debate audiences with our donors” but said that charge “is incorrect.”
Cairncross said RNC donors constituted only .6 percent of the South Carolina debate audience — the equivalent of 10 tickets out of 1,600.
“Questions have been raised as to why the crowd at the South Carolina debate was so actively engaged in expressing their reactions to what was happening on the debate stage,” Cairncross wrote in the memo.
“One possible, even perhaps probable, reason is that — at their request — campaigns received a higher allocation of tickets in South Carolina than they had previously,” he said. “Each campaign received 107 tickets, and thus campaign partisans constituted 40 percent of the South Carolina debate crowd (each campaign expressed satisfaction with their ticket number ahead of the South Carolina debate).”
Cairncross denied the possibility that people sold their tickets to donors.
“Every ticket to RNC-sanctioned debates is matched on a name identification basis to its holder,” he wrote. “Individuals who receive tickets are entered into an electronic database before they arrive, and are required to produce a government-issued photo ID matching the name in the database and on their ticket before being allowed entry into a debate.”
Judging by the noise of the crowd, the audience at Saturday’s debate in Charleston seemed to be pro-Jeb Bush and anti-Donald Trump at times. (VIDEO: Fighting Back Audience Boos, Trump Says ‘Jeb Is So Wrong’)
When Trump found himself being booed at one point, he said during the debate: “That’s Jeb’s special interest and lobbyist talking.”
Trump, who has repeatedly accused the RNC of not treating him fairly, later said of the debate: “When I walked in it was like my wife was clapping, my kids were clapping, but the whole room was made up of special interests and donors, which is a disgrace from the R.N.C.”