DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the winner of the 2012 GOP caucuses, told Breitbart News in the spin room after the undercard Fox News Channel debate that he’s pleased the Fox News Channel is being exposed for being biased in favor of establishment GOP candidates for president.
Specifically, Santorum ripped not just Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly for refusing to put him on their shows even once since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign in May.
Santorum makes the point that it’s fairly outrageous Kelly, O’Reilly, and others have blacked out his candidacy, as he didn’t just win the 2012 Iowa caucuses; he went on to win 10 additional states afterwards. Santorum’s comments came before he went over to billionaire and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s veterans benefit across town. Trump pulled out of the debate and instead hosted a Santorum and Mike Huckabee-attended veterans benefit because of Fox News’s bias.
“I wish all the networks would receive the same criticism that Fox is getting right now, but look, you’re looking at a guy who announced on the last week of May and has not been invited back on Fox and Friends, has never had an interview on Megyn Kelly, has never had an interview with Bill O’Reilly,” Santorum said. “They won’t put me on the show. And this is a guy that won the Iowa caucuses four years ago, and when you look at their biggest primetime shows, we haven’t had access to their shows.”
Santorum did thank Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer, Greta Van Susteren, and Sean Hannity for having him on their shows. But he said the only reason that happens is because each of them are “friends,” and he wouldn’t even be on those programs if it were up to the network bosses.
“Now, I thank Bill and Martha, I’ve been on their show and Greta and Sean are friends—but they’re friends, and that’s why I’m on their show, I’m their friends,” Santorum said. “We’ve known each other for years but it is a different story by speaking out.”
Then Santorum went straight after the Fox News Channel’s chief executive, Roger Ailes, saying that Ailes “will have a field day” by further attacking him by drowning his voice out. Santorum said:
Roger Ailes will have a field day by making sure that I don’t have access to the shows in the future. You know what, at some point you sort of have to speak out and realize that the game is being stacked. And look, let me explain why the game is being stacked. The game is being stacked because Fox is a business. Fox is a business. So I’m not blaming Roger Ailes and I hope he listens to the rest of this quote and not just what I said in naming him. But Fox is a business and their business is to get eyeballs for their shows. And what’s driving eyeballs for everybody’s shows, as you know, is a certain candidate in this race. So they’re in a business to get advertising dollars and make a profit. Touche. The reality is by doing that they’re not doing what most people think they’re doing which is giving everyone the opportunity to make their case to the American public. So if we just cut the charade that that’s what it is about and be honest and say look we’re doing this because you folks tune in when we do it, then I think we’d actually have a much more honest understanding of what’s going on out there.
Santorum also criticized the fact that the Fox News Channel continues to divide the Republican Party into “undercard” debates and “main stage” debates—a move that Fox led with the August debate, and all the networks including Fox have continued since then. Santorum said:
It’s sort of an outrage for the people of Iowa that you have a media that is trying to determine the race before the people of Iowa vote. The reality is that Bill O’Reilly’s playing right now. Do you think they’re going to play Bill O’Reilly after the debate and have a taped show? Or are they going to have a reaction from what happened? They didn’t promo it, they didn’t talk about it, and now they’re not even talking about it afterwards. This is the kind of stuff—you talk about stacking the deck so you’re going to get a predetermined result. That’s what’s going on. And we see it in all of the media, and every time I get on a show the first question is: ‘Well Trump said this…’ We had some good substantive debate up there and that’s good, and here’s what I know: The people of Iowa take this much more seriously than the national media does. They’re going to look at the issues and they’re going to decide based on those issues and the skills and the leadership ability and the knowledge and the experience of who’s going to be able to shake up Washington and make it happen. We made our case that we have a pretty strong track record of being able to get things done and passing conservative things. It’s easy to pass immigration bills that President Obama will sign. But it’s not easy to pass welfare reform bills that Bill Clinton signed. That’s the difference between someone who goes there and fights and leads and someone who goes there and just tries to go along with the way things are going in Washington.
Santorum also said that despite the efforts of the Fox News Channel to drown out his campaign for the presidency this cycle, he expects he’ll “shock some folks” in Monday evening’s Iowa caucuses.
“We’re picking up caucus captains every single day. I held a town hall meeting the night before last and had 16,000 people on the call from Iowa. So people are still listening, looking for what they want to hear,” Santorum said. “That was more than we had four years ago. And I think it may be important because four years ago they heard a lot more from me than this time, and they actually want to hear ‘hey, what’s Rick Santorum doing.’ And that’s exciting. I think we have an opportunity in Iowa to surprise again, and we’ll wait and see what happens on Monday night. But I am getting more and more confident we’re going to shock some folks.”