Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina traded jabs Wednesday over their business record with each accusing the other, essentially, of corporate incompetence.
While the two have been engaged in a bitter back-and-forth for weeks now, this exchange was sparked by a question from moderator Jake Tapper.
Trump said that Hewlett Packard "is a disaster and continues to be a disaster," referencing the recent announcement that the company will soon shed as many as 30,000 jobs.
Fiorina led HP for six years before she was fired a decade ago by the company’s board of directors. On stage Wednesday, she defended her business record, saying that "when you challenge the status quo…you make enemies."
Trump, though, noted a Yale researcher’s comments on Fiorina’s tenure as "one of the worst tenures for a CEO he has ever seen."
Fiorina pointed out that Trump drove some of his casinos to bankruptcy four times -- "a record", saying he ran them into "mountains of debt as well as losses using other people’s money."
"Why should we trust you to manage the finances of this nation any differently than you managed the finances of your casinos," she asked.
At one point, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made it clear that he had had enough, and the viewers likely had too.
"The fact is that we don't want to hear about your careers, back and forth and volleying back and forth who did well and poorly," Christie said. "You're both successful people. Congratulations.”
“I’m as entertained as anyone by this personal back-and-forth about your careers,” he added.
But the average American worker “could care less about your careers," he added. “They care about theirs."