Donald Trump offered some excuses for his widely-panned performance at Monday night’s debate.
There was the bad microphone which no one, except for him, seemed to notice. Then there were the questions from the moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, some of which Trump complained about the next day on “Fox and Friends.”
“He hit me on ‘birther,'” Trump told the hosts. “He hit me on a housing deal from many years ago that I settled with no recourse and no guilt. He asked me about that. That’s a beauty to be asked — a 40-year-old lawsuit.”
Trump did, in fact, have to defend himself during the debate from allegations that he was sued by the Justice Department in 1973 which charged he and his father with intentionally failing to rent apartments to blacks and Hispanics. Except that Holt never asked about the lawsuit. The issue was brought up by Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s assessment on how he performed during the debate was also a tad problematic.
“I won on Slate,” Trump said during the same “Fox and Friends” interview. “I won Drudge in almost 90% of the vote in that poll. I won Time magazine. I won CBS. I won every single poll other than CNN.”
The problem is that the “polls” on Slate, Drudge and Time were online surveys in which there was no scientifically drawn sample of people that was representative of US voters. Anyone could sign on and vote — and one could vote as many times as they liked. Such surveys are not considered credible.
Oh, and there was no CBS post-debate poll at all.
