Republicans blame moderators for Trump's poor debate performance

PHILADELPHIA — Republicans know Donald Trump didn’t win Tuesday’s debate. And they know who to blame: the media.

“It was three-on-one. They continued to engage in so-called fact-checking of Donald Trump. They never did that to Kamala Harris,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told reporters.

“You have two moderators there who acted as agents of the Harris campaign,” said David Bossie, a longtime Trump adviser and Republican National Committe member from Maryland.

“It was a little outrageous that they would fact-check only one candidate on the fly," said Tim Murtaugh, who was the communications director for Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Trump had been setting the stage for weeks, arguing that the debate would be biased against him. Soon after the debate began, the complaints began rolling in — on social media, at watch parties across the nation — as if on cue: If anyone thought Trump was having a bad debate, it’s because of the media.

The posture from Trump's backers on Tuesday stood in contrast to the June debate against President Joe Biden on CNN, which didn’t have any fact checking and left Trump saying he was treated “very fairly.”

Just 40 minutes after Tuesday’s debate ended, Trump himself picked up the charge that he was treated unfairly, an allegation on brand with his long-running critique of the news media as biased.

“I thought that was my best Debate, EVER, especially since it was THREE ON ONE!” the GOP nominee for president posted on Truth Social.

Trump surrogates and staff in the post-debate spin room echoed the argument.

During the course of the 90-minute debate, ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly sought to set the candidates — and the viewing public — straight on Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations. Those false claims included the viral accusation that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, kill and eat pets, the charge that Democratic states allow the killing of infants after birth and Trump’s statement that crime in the country is “through the roof.”

Harris’ claims were less far-fetched, and — to Republicans’ displeasure — the moderators didn’t similarly correct her. However, Davis did confront Harris over her flip-flopping on key issues, including fracking and buyback programs for assault weapons. She also challenged her on why the Biden-Harris administration waited until six months before the election to issue executive actions on the border.

To Republicans watching, the lopsided fact-checking undermined the legitimacy of the debate and reinforced long-standing beliefs about mainstream media bias against conservatives — and Trump in particular.

“They made themselves the story,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said in the spin room. He criticized the moderators for not fact-checking Harris’ comments on Charlottesville, which he said were taken out of context. He also said Trump’s comments that his loss would result in a “bloodbath,” were intended to be about energy policy and not the election.

Trump had repeatedly sought to manage expectations about the debate. Just last week, he insisted at a Fox News town hall that Harris would receive questions in advance, though there was no evidence to back up his claim. The moderators squashed the speculation at the start of Tuesday’s debate by saying neither nominee had seen questions ahead of time.

Some journalists covering the news media industry commended Davis’ and Muir’s performance, and Republican pollster Frank Luntz, a Trump critic, posted a kudos on X to the moderators for “covering a wider range of topics than most debates.”

A spokesperson for ABC News did not comment about Trump’s attacks on their credibility.

At debate watch parties in New York and Florida, Republicans viewed the faceoff as unfairly weighted.

“I think, in general, she was going to have a home field advantage,” said Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club, which hosted a watch party. “They definitely asked her a few questions on some policy changes over the years, but I didn’t really see any fact checks on her, and I think they were definitely necessary.”

At points throughout the night, the party’s attendees booed the moderators’ pushback on Trump's claims.

In Coral Gables, Florida, Katherine Amholt, a board member for Women’s Republican Club of Miami Federated, which hosted a watch party, pointed to opportunities she saw for the moderators to fact-check Harris tying Project 2025 to Trump — who didn’t write the plan, though many members of his former administration did. (Trump during the debate again disavowed any connection to the Heritage Foundation effort.)

Kevin Cooper, vice chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, said he wished the moderators had asked Trump more about his vision for the country rather than heated topics like Jan. 6 and the criminal indictments.

“It’s more about a review of grievances than it is about the future of our country, and that's really the moderator’s fault,” he said. “Few questions started with, ‘What would you do?’”

Jessica Piper and Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.