As of late last week, Mike Huckabee was still expressing his frustration about how little time airtime he got at the CNN Republican presidential debate on September 16.
The former governor of Arkansas came in second-to-last in speaking time out of the 11 candidates, beating only Scott Walker, who dropped out of the race less than a week later. Huckabee took to Fox News the next day to express his frustration, telling Bill O'Reilly "there were times I wasn't sure if I was at a CNN debate or if I was standing in line at the DMV. I've been stuck in LA traffic and wasted less time than standing on that stage for three hours last night getting three questions. Three questions."
In arguing that CNN focused on "playground argument"-style politics, centered on the likes of Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina, rather than substantive debate, Huckabee has repeated the lines first spoken to O'Reilly and made other complaints to the same effect many times since. Huckabee has thrown in some playground barbs of his own, suggesting that CNN may be trying to get back at him for his years as a Fox host, when he was "beating their rear-ends every weekend in ratings" and jabbing at the network for "finally make some money after being so miserably bad in the ratings all of these years."
Here is a timeline of Mike Huckabee railing against the CNN debate.
On O'Reilly on September 17: "It was very frustrating."
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"The two questions that I got, I only got because I did interrupt and just basically shoehorned my way into the discussion, I'm not sure that if I hadn't done that, I would have ended up having one question the entire night. I think people forget that this is not a TV show. It is supposed to be a forum in which Republicans, not the whole country, Republicans get a chance to decide who their nominee will be for President."
Speaking to Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson on September 18: "Jan, I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating it was."
"But, like, Gilligan's Island, the CNN debate, I thought, was a shipwreck."
And again on September 18: “There needs to be an allocation of time that provides some semblance — at least attempt — at fairness in the distribution of time."
"It was almost like the Fight Club and I think it was embarrassing and I think CNN should be ashamed of themselves for running that kind of a show rather than having a thoughtful, serious, issue-based debate."
“I want to say I’ve had more time with you today than I had on the CNN debate stage the other night,” Huckabee said on September 19 to a group of about 45 gathered at an Iowa coffee shop, according to the Des Moines Register.
And at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, held between September 25 and 27: "It was really three hours and twenty minutes of frustration for me."
"I think one of the things that impacted my ability was when it became evident to CNN that I wasn't gonna play their little gotcha game and I wasn't gonna get into a tit for tat with the other candidates and react to everything someone said, I pretty much got marginalized. I only got three questions the whole night."