GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina joined fellow candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in criticizing George Stephanopoulos and his donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“Carly does interviews with Hillary apologists pretty often, as you can see from our press coverage. So we’ll leave it to ABC to decide whether their viewers can still trust that George is telling them everything they need to know when it comes to his 2016 coverage or just the things that are about to leak in the conservative press,” Sarah Isgur Flores, Fiorina’s spokeswoman, told Breitbart News in an email.
Breitbart News previously reported that Cruz and Paul said Stephanopoulos shouldn’t be able to host the 2016 debates.
“Of course not,” Cruz said on Thursday. “Debates should not be moderated by partisan Democrats who are actively supporting one of the candidates.”
“It’s impossible to divorce yourself from that, even if you try,” Paul said to the New York Times. “I just think it’s really, really hard because he’s been there, so close to them, that there would be a conflict of interest if he tried to be a moderator of any sort.”
Stephanopoulos donated roughly $75,000 dollars to the Clinton Foundation and recused himself from the 2016 GOP presidential primary debates after news of his donations surfaced Thursday.
ABC News has not yet made a statement on whether Stephanopoulos will participate in 2016 election coverage, including general debates.
Media Research Center president Brent Bozell says that Stephanopoulos should recuse himself from all political coverage with Clinton in the race.
Bozell Tweeted on Friday that Stephanopoulos “has been deceiving his audience and should recuse himself from covering 2016,” and if he won’t, ABC News “should do it for him.”
Stephanopoulos appeared on television on Friday morning to apologize for his mistakes, but as Breitbart’s John Nolte detailed, he didn’t tell the full story in his apology.
“I want to address some news you may have seen about me,” Stephanopoulos said.
Over the last several years I’ve made substantial donations to dozens of charities, including the Clinton Global Foundation. Those donations were a matter of public record but I should have made additional disclosures on-air when we covered the Foundation. And I now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake. Even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help the children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should’ve gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. I apologize to all of you for failing to do that.