Former President Trump and Republicans are pointing fingers in the aftermath of his debate with Vice President Harris that saw the Republican nominee frequently fall into traps set by his opponent and struggle to drive home the message his campaign had previewed.
Trump and his allies hammered the moderators at host network ABC News, accusing the outlet of disproportionately fact-checking his responses compared to his political rival.
“It was three to one. It was a rigged deal as I assumed it would be,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday.
But some Republicans took issue with Trump’s advisers, arguing he was ill-prepared for the showdown, while others said it was the candidate himself who failed to aggressively tie Harris to President Biden until the closing moments of the debate.
“It was an incredibly typical performance on his part when he’s unprepared,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was a key part of Trump’s debate prep teams in 2016 and 2020, said on “Good Morning America.”
“It’s clear he didn’t have anyone who would smack him around during prep this time, because he went out there and just did whatever the heck he wanted, straight from his instinct and his gut, which is to be angry and a grievance candidate,” Christie added.
For more than 90 minutes Tuesday, Harris managed to get under Trump’s skin at nearly every turn, baiting him with comments about his rally crowds, Project 2025, foreign leaders mocking him and critics such as the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
A CNN rapid poll of debate watchers found 63 percent said Harris won the debate, compared to 37 percent who said Trump won the debate. Trump allies highlighted the poll’s finding that a majority of viewers felt the former president would handle the economy better.
Trump called it “our best debate ever,” but the former president and others quickly searched for others to blame for his struggles to remain on message.
The most common target was ABC News and moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who, unlike the moderators of the June CNN debate between Trump and Biden, pushed back in real time on some of Trump’s falsehoods about abortion and immigrants abusing pets.
“Three vs. one” became a mantra on the right as Republicans sought to portray the moderators as biased against Trump.
“This debate is three vs one — the ABC moderators clearly shilling for Kamala Harris,” Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who helped Trump prepare, posted on the social platform X.
“Literally the question to Trump was, ‘Why did you do the horrible thing?’ And the question to Harris is, ‘What do you think about the horrible thing Trump said?’” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Fox News.
But other Republicans acknowledged it was not the moderators at the root of Trump’s issues. Some suggested it was his team who prepared him for the debate.
The former president has long eschewed traditional mock debates, instead holding rallies and sitting for interviews while huddling with aides on the side to go over policy and lines of attack. Gabbard and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) were among those who assisted in his preparation ahead of Tuesday’s debate with Harris.
“That debate last night was not three against one, it was four against one. Trump was also having to deal with the morons of the right, who got in his head and filled him up with a bunch of nonsense before he got on stage,” Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host, posted on X.
Trump’s team had for days argued Harris had the higher bar to clear and repeatedly hyped up the former president’s debating prowess, with one senior adviser likening him to a prized fighter who was impossible to prepare for.
Asked about criticism of his advisers, the Trump campaign pointed to a statement sent out Tuesday night near the conclusion of the debate in which senior aides Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles praised Trump’s “masterful” performance.
“We saw President Trump lay out his bold vision of America and how he would continue to build upon the successes of his first term by supercharging the economy, securing the border, and stopping crime from ravaging communities across the country,” LaCivita and Wiles said.
“The choice could not be more clear — President Trump was the clear winner tonight, and he will win for America when he returns to the White House,” they added.
While few Republicans were willing to directly criticize Trump himself, there was clear frustration among some allies that he did not execute the strategy his campaign had laid out in the days leading up to the debate.
Trump’s team made clear he would seek to tie Harris directly to Biden and use her record as a prosecutor, senator and vice president to paint her as a liberal out of step with the mainstream.
At one point, he said Biden “hates” Harris, undermining one of the president’s main arguments that the two were in lockstep. It was only in the final half hour of the debate that he told viewers “she is Biden,” and it wasn’t until his closing statement that he made the direct case Harris has had three and a half years to push for the kind of changes she’s calling for as a presidential candidate.
“He hit the critical line, but at the end,” said one former Trump White House official. “It should have come right at the beginning.”
While Republicans expressed some disappointment with how the evening went, there was a sense that it was not nearly the disaster that June’s debate was for Biden, who faced pressure to end his candidacy after his rough performance.
Polls show a neck and neck race, with a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday showing Trump ahead 1 percentage point nationally and tied with Harris in multiple battleground states.
“He missed opportunities to hurt her,” one Republican strategist said. “But it was much lower stakes for him.”