Huckabee: Carson and Trump can't take credit for debate rule change

By Sean Langille, Sean Langille

Published December 20, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee isn't letting Donald Trump and Ben Carson take all the credit for forcing CNBC to change its debate rules. The network agreed Friday to shorten the next Republican debate to two hours after the pair threatened to pull out of the forum if the network didn't agree to their demands.

Huckabee says it was not just the retired neurosurgeon and billionaire businessman that were pushing for the changes.

"It wasn't just the two of them. Every one of the candidates and their representatives were in a conference call. In fact, several of them. I understand some of them got very heated," Huckabee told Fox News Saturday.

According to reports, a tense exchange occurred on the call when a top aide for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told CNBC they could "go f--- themselves" if they would not permit opening and closing statements.

"There was an extraordinary push back to keep this at two hours. Number one, the insufferable three hour debate that we went through the last time should never happen again," added Huckabee.