Republicans Struggle to Spin Trump’s Disatrous Debate Performance

Donald Trump exploded on the debate stage against Kamala Harris on Tuesday night. The former president fell into an apparent trap set by the vice president, delivering a series of angry, rally-style speeches and telling lies that forced ABC News anchors to repeatedly fact-check his statements in real time.

Right-wing lawmakers and commentators are offering a list of excuses to minimize the damage. In the post-debate propaganda room and on social media, allies of the former president are promoting everything from moderator bias, to conspiracies about hidden earbuds, to claims that debates don’t really matter.

The immediate target of right-wing ire were ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis.

Trump himself has claimed that the hosts have been unfairly colluding against him — when in fact they were fact-checking some of his more ludicrous claims. In one instance, Moyer rebutted a Trump outburst in which he accused undocumented immigrants of killing and eating people’s pets. In another exchange, the moderators responded to Trump’s claim that Democrats support executing babies shortly after birth.

“It was three against one,” Trump said after leaving the stage.

Right-wing influencers and commentators have echoed the same complaint.

Lara Trump, the former president's daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, called the debate “three against one.”

“ABC's moderators are a disgrace to their profession,” Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“The moderators of the debate may be the beneficiaries of Democratic paychecks,” wrote Senator Lindsey Graham. “This is ridiculous. This is the worst-monitored debate in history.”

“This is not a debate, this is a public show trial where ABC News is the judge, jury and executioner,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said angrily.

Other pro-Trump accounts began tweeting a conspiracy theory that Harris’s earrings were secret earpieces that allowed her to receive answers from her staff. A quick side-by-side look at the advertised earpieces and the jewelry Harris was wearing shows that they bear only vague similarities.

There were also many who went further and said that Trump performed better than Harris. Jesse Watters on Fox News claimed that Trump was actually He won the debate because his “memorable” lines would dominate the conversation. “If you’re a Republican, you’re going to look at this and say, ‘That’s Donald Trump,’” he said.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) wrote on X that Trump had a “strong debate victory” and a “powerful message for America First.” She also called the moderators “pro-Kamala activists who baselessly attacked President Trump.”

Perhaps the craziest attempt to distract from Trump's poor performance came from Elon Musk, who responded to Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris on Tuesday night by giving the pop star a crazy performance.

“Okay Taylor… you win… I'll give you a baby and guard your cats with my life,” he wrote.

But even Musk had to admit that Harris did a good job. “While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to @realDonaldTrump, @KamalaHarris exceeded most people’s expectations tonight,” he added.

Fox News' Brit Hume also acknowledged that Harris was not the failed caricature created by the right-wing media.

“This is a different person than the person she was in her CNN interview, but a different person than the complete idiot many of us thought she was while serving as vice president,” he said.

“She was prepared. She kept her cool. She saw the advantages and she took them. She succeeded in seducing him, and that is what happened in the debate in my view. So she came out victorious in this debate, in my view, without a doubt,” Hume added.