CLEVELAND — During a brief, chaotic scrum with reporters after the debate here Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he believes he won the televised showdown but thought the moderators were not “nice” to him.
“The questions to me were much tougher than the questions to anyone else,” Trump said, going on to single out co-moderator Megyn Kelly.
He also expressed frustration with the way Kelly “behaved.”
“The questions to me were not nice,” he said. “I didn’t think they were appropriate.”
At one point during the debate, Kelly said: “Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.”
Elaborating, she said: “You’ve called women you don’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”
“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump replied.
Kelly replied: “For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”
Trump responded to that line of questioning by saying “the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”
Speaking to reporters for a few minutes in the spin room after the debate, Trump said: “I though it was an unfair question. They didn’t ask those questions of anyone else. … But you know, the answers were good obviously. Because everybody thinks I won the debate.”