Former President Donald Trump has revealed his one “regret” concerning his first and possibly only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Shortly after holding a packed campaign rally in Long Island on Wednesday night, Trump declared himself “the GOAT” of presidential debates while appearing on Fox News‘ Gutfeld! and arguing that ABC News moderators treated him “unfairly” by fact-checking his false statements during the debate.
“They said I’m the GOAT in debates,” said Trump. “And the GOAT means ‘greatest of all time.’ And I walked off that stage and I thought I had the best debate. And I was very unfairly treated by the anchor. I’m not fans of those guys anymore.”
“They came at me on everything, like crime… I said the crime is rampant, he said crime is down,” the former president said, before continuing to claim that crime is up since he left office, and he was “right.”
Former President Donald Trump is pictured in New York City on September 18, 2024. Trump said on Wednesday that the “only regret” he had concerning his September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was being too “elegant” and not attacking the moderators more.
Spencer Platt
Trump went on to claim that a consensus had been reached that Harris only spoke in “word salad” during the September 10 debate, while “the fake news said, oh, she did well.”
The former president then said that his “only regret” was that he was too “elegant” during the debate and that he should have spent more time attacking the moderators.
“I think my only regret is that I wanted to be elegant, and I didn’t want to go after the anchors,” said Trump. “I wish I did, in a way.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns via email on Wednesday night.
Despite the Harris campaign asking for another debate, Trump has said that he will refuse to take part because he believes that he “won” the first contest, and he therefore has no reason to debate Harris again.
Trump claimed that “every single poll” shows him to be the debate winner, citing favorable but easily manipulated informal surveys from social media and conservative media outlets as evidence of his victory.
However, scientific polls have shown that a clear majority of Americans believe Harris outperformed Trump during the debate.
A CNN flash poll on the night of the debate found that 63 percent of viewers thought Harris won, while 37 percent picked Trump as the victor. An Angus Reid Global poll conducted in the days after the debate showed that Americans thought the vice president won by a better than two-to-one margin, 56 percent to 25 percent.
Other surveys conducted since then tell the same story, with a poll released by The Economist/YouGov on Wednesday finding that 56 percent of debate watchers thought Harris won, while 27 percent said Trump won. The poll also found that Americans thought Harris was more truthful than Trump during the debate.
There are additional indicators that suggest most view Harris as the debate winner, including almost every individual poll conducted since the debate took place showing Harris gaining ground on Trump in the presidential election.
An average of national polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight showed Harris leading Trump by 3.3 points as of Wednesday night, while a RealClearPolitics average showed the vice president up by 2 points.
