Former President Trump and Republican lawmakers have pointed fingers in the aftermath of the debate with Vice President Harris, who said the Republican candidate frequently fell into her opponent's traps and failed to deliver on the message she foretold on the campaign trail.
President Trump and his supporters slammed the ABC News hosts, accusing the network of fact-checking Trump's answers more than those of his political opponents.
“It was 3 to 1. It was a rigged deal, just as I predicted,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday.
But some Republicans faulted Trump's advisers for not adequately preparing him for the showdown, while others blamed the candidate himself for failing to actively link Harris to President Biden until the debate's final moments.
“It was a typical performance of his lack of preparation,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a key member of the 2016 and 2020 debate preparation teams, told “Good Morning America.”
“Clearly no one was going to knock him down in the run-up to this election because he followed his instincts and his gut feeling to be the angry, disgruntled candidate and did whatever he wanted to do,” Christie added.
For more than 90 minutes on Tuesday, Harris succeeded in tugging at Trump's nerves at nearly every turn, commenting on the audience, Project 2025, foreign leaders who have mocked Trump and critics such as the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
A CNN rapid poll of debate viewers found that 63% said Harris won the debate, compared with 37% who said Trump won. Trump supporters touted poll results showing a majority of viewers felt former president Harris would do a better job managing the economy.
Trump called it “the best debate we've ever had,” but the former president and others were quick to blame others for Trump's struggles to stay on message.
The most frequent target was ABC News and its hosts David Muir and Lindsey Davis, who, unlike the moderators of the Trump-Biden CNN debate in June, countered in real time some of Trump's falsehoods about abortion and immigrants abusing pets.
“Three against one” became a watchword on the right as Republicans tried to portray the hosts as biased against Trump.
“This debate is 3-1. ABC moderators are clearly rooting for Kamala Harris,” Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who helped Trump prepare for the debates, posted on social platform X.
“Literally the question to Trump was, 'Why did you do this horrible thing?' And the question to Harris was, 'What do you think about the horrible things that Trump said?'” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told Fox News.
But other Republicans acknowledged that the root of Trump's problems wasn't the moderator, with some suggesting it was his team that prepared him for the debate.
The former president has long eschewed traditional mock debates, instead holding rallies, giving interviews and gathering with aides to discuss policy and lines of attack. Gabbard and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) were among those helping him prepare ahead of Tuesday's debate with Harris.
“Last night's debate wasn't 3 to 1, it was 4 to 1. Trump also had to deal with a bunch of right-wing idiots who got into his head and fed him a mountain of nonsense before he even got on stage,” conservative radio host Erick Erickson posted on X.
The Trump campaign has argued in recent days that Harris has a higher bar to clear, repeatedly touting the former president's debate skills, with one senior adviser likening her to a top-tier fighter for whom it is impossible to prepare.
Asked about the criticism of advisers, the Trump campaign pointed to a statement issued Tuesday night near the end of the debate in which senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Suzi Wiles praised Trump for a “masterful” performance.
“We have watched President Trump build on the successes of his first term by laying out a bold vision for America, revitalizing our economy, securing our border, and stopping the crime that ravages communities across the country,” LaCivita and Wiles said.
“The choice couldn't be clearer: President Trump is the winner tonight and will win for America if he returns to the White House,” they added.
While few Republicans directly criticized Trump himself, there was clear frustration among some of his supporters that he had not followed through on the strategy he had laid out on the campaign trail in the days leading up to the debate.
The Trump campaign has made clear it is seeking to directly link Harris to Biden and use her background as a prosecutor, senator and vice president to portray her as an outcast liberal.
At one point he said Biden “hates” Harris, undermining the president's main claim that the two were aligned. It was not until the final 30 minutes of the debate that he told viewers “she's Biden,” and only in his final remarks did he directly claim that Harris had three and a half years to push for the kind of change she wants as a presidential candidate.
“He hit a key line, but at the end,” a former Trump White House official said. “He should have done that from the beginning.”
Republicans expressed some disappointment with how the debate played out, but some said it was less disastrous for Biden than his June debate, where he faced pressure to drop out of the race after a poor performance.
Polls show the race remains close, with a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday showing Trump leading by 1 percentage point nationally and tied with Harris in several battleground states.
“He missed an opportunity to hurt her,” one Republican strategist said, “but for him, it was a lot lower stakes.”
