Next debate will be 2 hours

The letter signed by both men stated, “Neither Mr. Trump or Dr. Carson will participate in your debate if it is longer than 120 minutes including commercials and does not include opening and closing statements”.

“Now, if our nominee happened to be someone like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, who have strong Hispanic roots themselves and connections themselves, that might not be as big an issue”.

“Why is the GOP being asked to do a debate that is so much longer than the just-aired and very boring #DemDebate?”

Late Thursday, CNBC spokesman Brian Steel explained the thinking behind the network’s proposed scheduling, but revealed it was considering bending to the candidates’ demands.

Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul and dominating front-runner, has said he’s self-financing his campaign with his own money and only accepting small checks from individuals. Fiorina is fourth in the polls with an average of 7.8 percent.

The NBC News/SurveyMonkey survey of 4,898 adults was conducted October 13th through 15th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.

But Trump shot that down to Van Susteren, saying, “I could stand for five hours”. If Trump is elected, maybe he will be able to do away with the boring Oscars, Emmys, cable-news shows, local-news shows, and football games, too, calling on his Great Secretary – head of the Great Department – to make everything entertaining again. With the exception of Carson, none of the other candidates consistently poll in double digits.

When those margins eventually start to get trimmed back, the sense of inevitability Trump wants to create will probably start to fade. Given their druthers, CNBC producers would probably just as soon keep candidates like Paul or Kasich’s airtime limited – something that can help finish off already-struggling campaigns.

The next day, however, Ivanka said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit in Washington that her father’s campaign was hard on a personal level.

Ed Brookover, one of Carson’s campaign aides, said opening and closing statements were crucial. With fewer minutes onstage, there are fewer opportunities for Trump to screw up, and fewer chances for the other candidates to take the national spotlight. Of the $5.8 million raised since his campaign began, he has spent 96% of it. His campaign has $254,000 on hand-considerably less than many of his rivals.