Donald Trump said the audience at last week’s presidential debate “went crazy” for him.
The only problem? The debate didn’t have a live audience.
In a Wednesday appearance on the Fox News talk show Gutfeld!, Trump again criticized the fairness of the debate’s moderation by ABC News anchors Linsey Davis and David Muir.
“They didn’t correct her once,” Trump said, referring to his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, “and they corrected me—everything I said, practically—I think 9 times or 11 times.” (The moderators fact-checked Harris zero times and Trump five times.)
However, Trump’s memory of the day seemed to falter. “And the audience was absolutely—they went crazy,” he said. “I walked off, I said, ‘That was a great debate, I loved it.’”
A condition of the debate was that there be no live audience. Many users on X took Trump’s comment as a chance to lambaste the former president and allege cognitive health.
“The audience being the voices in his head,” wrote @whereami345. The sentiment was echoed by @ArtCandee, who posted, “Donald Trump is senile.”
Some, however, took to Trump’s defense. “He was clearly referring to the people at home when he used the word ‘audience.’ Stop being disingenuous, folks,” wrote @CilComLFC.
Indeed, Trump’s team is holding firm that the former president was not referring to a live audience.
“He was obviously talking about the viewing audience watching on television and other mediums,” a Trump spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
Two sentences after Trump said the audience went crazy, he referenced the high TV viewership numbers for the debate in the Fox News clip.
