Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney challenged President Donald Trump for interrupting “a lot” during the first presidential debate.
During a Thursday morning phone appearance on Fox Business’ “Varney & Co.”, Varney brought up tonight’s NBC Townhall to ask the president if, when “faced with hostility,” he would have the same “aggressive tone” he had during the first debate.
The president interrupted both moderator Chris Wallace and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden multiple times throughout the previous debate.
“Well, you don’t change,” Trump responded.
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“I think I won the first debate,” Trump insisted. “According to most people, I won it. But then what happens, you have to understand I was debating him, he’s easy, and Chris Wallace, and every time I said something … Chris Wallace didn’t like the question.”
The president insisted that Wallace protected Biden from “choking.”
“So I lost a lot of respect for Chris Wallace,” Trump said to Varney.
“In defense of Chris Wallace, my colleague, I would say that you didn’t make his job any easier,” said Varney. “You did interrupt a lot.”
“I did because what Biden was saying was all false stuff,” Trump responded before referring to an anonymously sourced September report from The Atlantic alleging that the president called fallen soldiers “losers.”
“Nobody respects the fallen soldier or the living soldier more than me,” he said. “They made it up. It was an anonymous source. I had 25 people refute it. It didn’t make any difference. And that’s when I said the gloves have to come off anyway.” (RELATED: ‘That’s The Clean Technique’: Ari Fleischer Uses Whiteboard To Offer Trump Three Points Of Debate Advice)
Trump went on to argue that people will believe “phony stories” unless they are interrupted.
Citing a Fox News analysis showed the president interrupted Biden’s answers 71 times and Wallace’s questions 74 times for “a total of 145 interruptions,” Wallace later said that Trump “bears the primary responsibility” for what many people considered an off-the-rails debate last month.