Citing unnamed “rival staffers” inside the Clinton and O’Malley campaigns, Yahoo News reports that top Sanders aide Mark Longabaugh exchanged heated words with a CBS representative on a conference call Saturday morning. According to the anonymous staffers, who were reportedly on the call with Longabaugh and CBS, the Sanders aide felt the network’s decision to partially re-focus the debate on foreign policy following the Friday night terrorist attacks on Paris was “not what any of us agreed to,” and constituted a change in the terms of the debate.
Reached for comment this afternoon by the New Republic, Sanders’s communication director Michael Briggs expressed no alarm over the re-focus, saying “we expect Paris and related issues will be the focus early on in the debate.”
But as of 5:00 pm, the Sanders campaign is evidently reporting the format of tonight’s debate will remain unchanged:
Sanders campaign manager says his team prevailed in talks with CBS and the debate format is not changing tonight.
— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) November 14, 2015