RUTHFULLY YOURS

As The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway predicted, CNBC’s management of Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate was a complete disaster. The night’s biggest loser, aside from everyone who suffered through watching the debate debacle, was CNBC moderator John Harwood, who blatantly and aggressively lied about the tax plan proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Harwood accused Rubio of offering a tax plan that was heavily tilted towards the rich. When Rubio corrected him and said that no, lower-income taxpayers receive a higher percentage of the plan’s benefits than rich taxpayers, Harwood repeatedly argued with him and declared that Rubio’s plan was just a big, fat giveaway to the wealthy 1 percent. Proving that his agenda was to push progressive talking points, not to offer debate questions that might lead to insightful answers, John Harwood swore up and down on live television that the conservative Tax Foundation backed up his assertion about Rubio’s tax plan.

Guess what? Harwood got his facts wrong. Very wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. We know this because Harwood himself admitted as much on Twitter earlier in October:

We also know Harwood was full of it, because the head of the Tax Foundation was forced to publicly correct Harwood on Twitter during the debate. Here’s what Scott Hodge, the president of the Tax Foundation, said about the main beneficiaries of Marco Rubio’s tax plan:

John Harwood refused to issue a correction before the debate audience he deliberately misled. The clock is now ticking on whether he’ll issue any correction at all.