Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on Monday blasted the media and insisted he was taken out of context he after compared the Republican Party to the Communist Party of China.
Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Sunday, Huntsman recalled that he had been disinvited to a Republican fundraiser in Florida because he called for "some sort of third party movement," according to Buzzfeed.
"This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script," President Barack Obama's former ambassador to China explained.
Huntsman told MSNBC on Monday that his comments had been taken out of context because there was a lack of "responsibility in media."
"You get these blogs out there, you know, Bottom-feeder, Buzzsaw, Buzzfeed, whatever they are, and they take a sentence out of context and it becomes a headline and pretty soon mainstream newspapers pick up on that," he told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. "Give me a break."
"Last time I was on the show, I basically talked about a duopoly, and if the Republican Party doesn't go big and go bold and go visionary during a time of need, you know, you're likely going to have an alternative voice or a separate angle of attack that's going to knock it down. That's just the way the free market of politics works."
Huntsman continued: "Shortly thereafter, I was disinvited from a Republican fundraising event, [at] which I was to be a guest speaker. And so as we were talking about that last night, I said you know, if you're not on script and you get knocked out of an event like that -- the parties are supposed to be big tent, you're supposed to bring in all ideas. And I thought for a moment about what they do in China if you're off script, the party. They knock you out. We shouldn't be doing that here."
