Jennifer Kerns, host of "All-American Radio" on iHeartRadio, told Newsmax on Thursday that she's "encouraging people to burn" their Republican National Committee cards because the organization doesn't "stand for free speech" after not pushing back when Fox banned former President Donald Trump's surrogates from the spin room at the first GOP presidential primary debate.
"The biggest loser of the night was [RNC Chair] Ronna McDaniel, who, remember, only won reelection because she promised, 'I'm the only one that's going to be able to get Trump to the table to attend the debates, to sign the loyalty pledge, to support the ultimate nominee,'" Kerns said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show."
"She has failed at both of those ... I thought it was such a failure last night. I'm encouraging people to burn their RNC membership cards today in a sign of solidarity — just burn them. Burn them because they don't stand for America; they don't stand for free speech. And, in fact, they are no different than the Democrats, who we oppose for squelching free speech."
While she was encouraging people to burn their RNC cards, Kerns turned her attention to burning the edges of an RNC flag with a candle lighter in protest.
Fox News did not allow Trump's surrogates into the spin room of Wednesday's Republican primary debate, in a highly unusual move that many construed as retaliatory over Trump's decision to not participate.
The network restricted the spin room to aides of candidates who were participating in the debate. Trump declined to attend as the runaway polling leader.
Surrogates and aides of the former president were expected to take part in post-debate promotion of their candidate, but were reportedly allowed to be in the spin room only if they were guests of media organizations.
Republican presidential candidate Larry Elder filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Fox News and the RNC for keeping him off the debate stage Wednesday night. In the complaint, the radio host accuses the two entities of changing the debate's qualification rules at the last minute.
Michigan businessman Perry Johnson, another GOP candidate, also filed a complaint Wednesday against Fox News and the RNC, claiming he was denied the chance to debate despite hitting "every metric put forward by the RNC."
Kerns also said that the RNC should be paying attention to the number of views Trump garnered doing a sit-down interview with former Fox host Tucker Carlson in lieu of the debate.
"If you look at the online ratings, about 1.5 million people viewed the Fox News YouTube stream of this. But if you look at the Twitter stream of this, Tucker and Trump's interview was about 78 million," she said. "So they had 77 million more viewers than the Fox News livestream. If you're trying to reach out to young voters and unconventional voters, which the Republican Party should be doing, they should be paying very close attention to those online numbers and that Trump and Tucker, he trounced them."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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