Columnist Pat Buchanan argued Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina won the second primetime debate, but also complimented the performances of Donald Trump, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Friday’s “McLaughlin Group.”
Buchanan stated, “I think you’d have to say Carly Fiorina won it, John. She was prepared. She was programmed. She was articulate. She was crisp. She was tough. And after the debate was over, everybody said — or a lot of people said she’d won, and she has really won, overwhelmingly, the post-game debate, if you will, on all the TV shows, the talking shows. So, people who think she won are going up, up and up right now, long after the debate is over. But I will say this: there — Carly Fiorina is now being projected as, if you will, the anti-Trump in the Republican Party, someone who will do for the establishment, take down Trump, which the establishment is desperate to get done. So, I think — I don’t think anybody was badly hurt in the debate. Some people did well. I think some people did very well. But there’s no doubt about it, I think, that Carly comes out number one.”
Buchanan later said, “I thought Jeb did a good job. And, look, you know, I like Trump, and he was being punched from every side in this debate, they’re hitting him here and then they kept showing his exasperation when he’s getting hit. But overall, it showed the very fact that there was a big guy, and there was all these people piling on, and in that sense, he stood his own.”
He also said Rand Paul “had a good debate,” and Marco Rubio and Fiorina were the most “charismatic” in the debate.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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