Former US President Donald Trump has criticized the “dishonest” moderation of his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris by ABC News, saying he would only consider a rematch if it were hosted by “a fair network.”
Speaking to Fox’s Sean Hannity immediately after Tuesday night’s debate, Trump claimed that he emerged from the encounter as the victor. Informed by Hannity that Harris reportedly wants a second debate, Trump seemed dismissive of the idea.
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“She wants it because she lost,” Trump told Hannity. “You know what happens when you’re a prizefighter and you lose, you immediately want a new fight… maybe if it was on a fair network I would do that.”
Harris is widely considered to have won the debate, with Trump struggling to fend off attacks from the vice president, as well as moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. According to a flash poll conducted by CNN on Tuesday night, 63% of viewers felt that Harris had outperformed Trump.
Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday morning, Trump slammed the debate as “totally rigged,” and called ABC the “most dishonest news organization.”
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“So many things I said were debunked, like totally debunked,” he told Fox. “But she could say anything she wanted. My stuff was right, but they would correct you.”
Trump was repeatedly interrupted and fact-checked by Muir and Davis throughout the debate, for instance when he claimed that Haitian migrants are “eating the pets” of people in Ohio. While multiple locals have testified that pet cats and wild birds are being eaten by the migrants, local police say they have received no reports of such incidents.
Harris was not fact-checked when she repeatedly tied Trump to ‘Project 2025’, a conservative manifesto explicitly disavowed by the former president. Nor was she corrected when she claimed that Trump once referred to neo-Nazis as “fine people.” In reality, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, but that he was “not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
“I’d be less inclined to [debate again] because we had a great night,” Trump told Fox on Wednesday, adding again: “We won the debate.”
Trump initially asked Harris to agree to three debates: one hosted by Fox News on September 4, another hosted by ABC on September 10, and a third hosted by NBC News on an unconfirmed date. Harris’ campaign only agreed to the ABC debate, although Trump wavered about committing to this showdown, accusing the network of “ridiculous and biased” coverage of him.