Xinhua/Qin Lang via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Ever since Donald Trump left the stage at Hofstra University after the first presidential debate of the season, he has been talking about all the things he would have done differently.
From the moment he made the unusual move of stopping by the “spin” room after Monday night’s debate, Trump started laying the groundwork for his own assessment of punches pulled against Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who is married to his third wife and has himself been accused of cheating, said he had planned to talk about Bill Clinton’s “transgressions” during the debate but made no mention of it at Hofstra, he said, for a simple reason.
“I got everything I wanted to say. I got it out, other than the transgressions of Bill,” Trump said after the debate of the former president’s alleged infidelities.
“I didn’t want to do it with Chelsea [Clinton], who I think is a very wonderful young lady. I didn’t want to say what I was going to say with Chelsea in the room,” he told ABC News of the Clintons’ only child.
Trump added: “So, maybe they’re well off to bring Chelsea all the time.”
Just as Trump raised the former president’s past after leaving it off the debate stage, he doubled-back Wednesday to Hillary Clinton’s recent health scare, which he also didn’t mention Monday night.
“You see all the days off that Hillary takes? Day off, day off, day off. All those days off and then she can’t even make it to her car — isn’t it tough?” he said at a Wednesday night rally in Iowa, referencing the incident at the New York 9/11 memorial service at which Clinton needed assistance before the revelation that she had pneumonia.
But with an eye to the next debate in St. Louis on Oct. 9., Trump isn’t only relying on his own instincts and advisers.
The Trump campaign sent out a fundraising email Thursday morning that included a “debate preparation survey” asking recipients to give “your immediate feedback from the first debate in order to win the second one.”
Despite such reflection, and what some have called missed debate opportunities, Trump denies the perception among many observers that he lost.
“I had a great time,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly on his Fox News show Wednesday night. “I know you say the polls weren’t scientific, but every single poll that was taken, I won the debate. And some of them by a lot.”
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