Trump Reflects on the First Debate

The morning after the first presidential debate, Donald Trump called in to Fox & Friends to share his thoughts on the event.

“I thought it went really well,” Trump said. “I had some hostile questions. That was okay. It was the debate of debates.”

Trump said that he expected moderator Lester Holt to be biased, but that he wasn’t as unfair as he could have been. On the other hand, he said, Holt left some fairly obvious topics on the shelf.

“Well, he didn’t ask her about the emails at all,” said Trump. “He didn’t ask her about her scandals. He didn’t ask her about the Benghazi deal that she destroyed. He didn’t ask her about a lot of things she should have been asked about. There’s no question about it. He didn’t ask about her foundation.”

Trump admitted that he didn’t handle some of the questions in the best possible way, though he concluded that there wasn’t much he could have done. “I was asked about my tax returns, which I’ve told about 500 times,” he said. “But I think I really did well, when we were asked normal questions. I think I did really well in answering those questions, but those [other] questions are not answerable in a positive light.”

Trump said he held back a potent comeback when Hillary was attacking him about his history of comments about women. Poised to hit her with her husband’s infidelities, Trump decided to play nice.

“I think I did the right thing,” said Trump. “It’s not worth a point. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it with Chelsea in the room.”

The first debate was perhaps not as explosive as we had hoped; Trump came in with a chance to demolish Hillary and that didn’t happen. But he held his own, and he was on fire for the first half hour – the portion of the debate watched by the most viewers. We’ll have to wait for the first legitimate polls to see if this debate moved the needle and, if so, in which direction. It did not feel like a blowout victory for either candidate.

At the end of the day, of course, a person’s debate performance has little to say about how they would perform as president. Surely if the last eight years have taught us anything, they’ve taught us that. Hopefully, this election will be decided on weightier matters.