Former President Trump spent an extended amount of time at his Thursday campaign event complaining about the moderators of his debate with Vice President Harris earlier in the week, attacking them as “low lives” and calling for them to be fired.
Trump held an event in Tucson, Ariz., where his campaign said he would deliver remarks focused on the economy and rising costs. He spent the first 15 minutes recapping his Tuesday debate with Harris and repeatedly targeted ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, at one point calling for the two to be fired.
“The public was not fooled. They saw right through it, Kamala’s lies and unprecedented partisan interference of two low-life anchors. They’re low lives,” Trump said, bemoaning that the moderators fact-checked a few of his inaccurate statements but didn’t do the same for Harris.
“These two people were bad news. They kept screaming at me,” Trump added.
Trump called Davis, who is Black, “nasty” and claimed she looked at the former president “with hatred in her eyes.”
The former president was kinder to Muir.
“I always liked him,” he said of the “World News Tonight” anchor. “I’m not going to watch him anymore. Because he’s not legit … And his hair is not as good as it used to be.”
Republicans expressed frustration with Trump’s performance Tuesday night, when Harris managed to repeatedly get under his skin and get him off message with attacks on his rally crowds, his financial fortune and his standing among foreign leaders.
Trump and his allies spent the hours after the debate complaining that it was “three vs. one” and that the moderators disproportionately pushed back on Trump’s statements.
During the debate, Muir and Davis fact-checked Trump on his false statements about internet conspiracies regarding migrants abusing pets in an Ohio town, as well as his claim that some Democrats support killing babies after birth. Doing so is already illegal.
Trump complained that the moderators similarly did not step in when Harris tied him to Project 2025, a policy blueprint he’s denied involvement with, or when she claimed he warned of a “bloodbath” if he lost. Those March comments from Trump were specifically about the comment.
The real-time pushback against the former president stood in contrast to what many observers decried as a lack of fact-checking from CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash during the June debate between Trump and President Biden.