Byron York of the Washington Examiner documents a recent conversation with the 45th president.
Former President Donald Trump knows he overdid it in his first debate with Joe Biden back in September 2020. In a recent conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I said to Trump, “A lot of people thought in the first debate with Biden that you were somewhat overamped, that you just went after him too much—”
“That I interrupted him,” said Trump. “Yeah, I think—”
“Do you agree with that?”
“Mmm huh,” Trump answered. Then, after a short pause, he defended the interruptions before conceding that yes, there were too many: “He lies so much,” Trump said. “He’s going on — everything he says is a lie. So I would call him because calling him out two minutes later is very tough because, you know, it’s a lie, it’s a lie, everything is a lie. I’ve never seen anything like it. So when I would interrupt, it looked like — I agree, though. The second debate I handled it much differently and got very good marks.”
Now another debate with Biden, this Thursday in Atlanta, is coming soon. But even when Trump talks about being forceful in the debate, he is not talking about being that forceful. With the experience of 2020 in mind, how does he handle this one?
“So I’ve been in 16, 17 debates,” Trump answered. “I think I’ve won almost all of them. I did well against Ted Cruz, who is a good debater, all these guys. I became president. Some people say I became president because of these debates. You can’t tell until you get up on the stage because it depends on how he comes out.”
“I was very aggressive in the first one,” Trump continued. “The second one, I was different, and I got great marks on the second one. It was a little unfair because, in the second one, a lot of votes had already been cast. So I’m probably going to look at the scene at the time. It’s like a fight. It depends on what the situation is.”
