Rachel Maddow: The Fox News Debate Is 'Rigged'

Fox News has "rigged" the first GOP debate, says Rachel Maddow, and they're doing it in plain sight.

Fox had said it would use an average of the five most recent national polls to pick the top 10 finishers. On Tuesday, it announced the 10 lucky candidates who made the cut for their debate and also the five polls it had used to pick them.

Maddow, who has reported for weeks on the Fox News criteria, said she was "surprised" when the cable channel announced on Tuesday that it had ignored it own rules -- or at least that it had amended its rules -- and the change would result in breaking a tie for the tenth spot.

The result is Ohio governor John Kasich (a former Fox News host) is in, while Texas governor Rick Perry is out. Maddow suggested Perry ought to sue.

The out MSNBC anchor had already been criticizing the notion of allowing in only the top 10 candidates as bogus science. After all, the statistical differences between candidates is so slight that they're all well within the margin of error of polling.

But now Fox has even hand-picked the five polls for its average, instead of using the five most recent. Hand-picking the polls let Fox essentially hand-pick the candidates, she argued.

See how Maddow explains the latest Fox News shenanigans in the segment from her show on Tuesday below: