Lindsey Graham leads right-wing uproar over Trump debate

For Lindsey Graham, there was only one word for Donald Trump's performance on Tuesday night in the debate against Kamala Harris: “disaster.” Trump was unprepared and his debate team should be fired, Graham told Tim Miller, host of the podcast “The Bulwark.”

Other figures on the right, however, claimed that the debate moderators were the villains of the evening, turning it into a “three-on-one attack” on Trump – as the former president himself put it, although he refused to commit to a second debate.

Even Fox News' Jesse Watters acknowledged Trump's chaotic performance, claiming that Americans didn't believe “any of these people won” – while attempting to portray Trump as a towering titan.

“He had moments where you thought, 'Oh my God, where are we going now?' and then he just had some great knockouts,” Watters said. “And that's how this race got more and more exciting.”

Laura Ingraham acknowledged the same: “Did Donald Trump miss some opportunities? Absolutely.”

Yet she claimed, “ABC helped Kamala Harris.”

The same goes for Sean Hannity, who tried to portray ABC as the “biggest loser of the debate,” saying the network had not adequately addressed Harris' past policies and that he still did not know much about them.

“I think in many ways her passing has done a disservice to the American people,” Hannity claimed. “It's on ABC-Disney.” (Disney is ABC's parent company.)

Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh tried to give a dose of reality to an X user who was appalled that Trump was “talking too much nonsense.”

“Do I have to lie to you and tell you that this was a brilliant performance by Trump?” asked Walsh.

After the debate, right-wing politicians, pundits and journalists sought to defend the former president and attack those they believed opposed him — most notably ABC. Throughout Tuesday night, a consortium of conservatives claimed that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis had Harris in the bag — all while Trump lashed out aimlessly throughout the debate.

“It must be so nice when the moderators represent you as a candidate,” wrote podcaster Megyn Kelly on X. “It makes everything so much easier.”

“These moderators are a shameful failure and this is one of the most biased and unfair debates I have ever seen,” she later wrote. “Shame on you, @ABC.”

“The moderators are letting @KamalaHarris get away with murder in this debate,” Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, wrote on X. “She repeats every debunked left-wing point of view from the last decade. But the moderators always make sure to make false 'corrections' for Trump after he makes a point.”

“These are questions for the elite debate in Manhattan – the American people are suffering, can't afford their food, and deserve answers on how to get better,” Meghan McCain wrote on X. “I don't know what the hell this is about, but these moderators are doing the American people a disservice.”

“It's ridiculous how ABC staged this to help Vice President Harris, but it doesn't work because it's so obvious,” radio host Hugh Hewitt wrote on X.

“David Muir criticizes and attacks Trump more than Kamala,” wrote Glenn Greenwald on X. “Kamala can relax because the ABC 'moderators' are conducting the debate for her.”

Muir and Davis consistently fact-checked the former president as he spread one falsehood after another, from the idea that in some states parents had the choice to kill their babies after birth to the claim that illegal immigrants eat pets.

But even Fox News commentator Brit Hume had to admit: Harris made the landing – and proved, according to Hume, that she is not “the absolute fool that so many of us thought she was.”

“She was calm, she was prepared, she kept a cool head,” Hume said. “She saw advantages and she took them. She successfully provoked him, and that is the story of the debate.”