Meet John Harwood, the moderator of tonight’s CNBC debate. Harwood is both CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent and a New York Times reporter. He’s also known for his habit of beating up on conservatives.
CNBC viewers know Harwood as an occasional panelist on Squawk Box, where he frequently clashes with the show’s more free-market hosts, Joe Kernen and Becky Quick. In one such episode, Harwood argued Obamacare critics aren’t smart enough to know what health-care reforms will actually reduce costs.
More recently, Harwood took to Twitter to defend Hillary Clinton from charges she mishandled classified material on her personal server:
PERSPECTIVE: Petraeus gave info he knew classified to someone he knew unauthorized to see it. No allegation yet HRC did anything like that.
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 17, 2015
When Republicans passed a budget in 2013 that President Obama vetoed, Harwood said the blame for the resulting shutdown sat squarely with Republicans. He also mocked Congress for seeking budget reforms in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, calling the demands worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit.
In a recent one-on-one with Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), he asked how he could advance such laissez-faire economic policy when historians will write that government — via the likes of Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama — “saved America” from another Great Depression.
In advance of tonight’s debate, we’ve compiled this short highlight reel of some of his sharpest anti-GOP attacks. Enjoy.