Donald Trump Says He Wants These Three People to Moderate Fox Debate

Former President Donald Trump shot down the idea of Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum moderating a presidential debate on the network, offering suggestions for three people he’d like to see instead.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to have Martha and Bret; I would love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret,” Trump said on Fox & Friends the morning after his first debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, naming Sean Hannity, Jesse Waters and Laura Ingraham as moderators he’d prefer.
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“Let’s give other people a shot,” Trump said Wednesday.
“I didn’t think Martha and Bret were good last night,” the Republican presidential nominee added, referring to Fox News’ post-debate coverage. “I thought Jesse was fantastic.”
During the debate in Philadelphia Tuesday night, Fox News Media’s executives wrote to the Harris and Trump campaigns, offering to host another debate.
The letter offered Baier and MacCallum as the hosts.
“As the Harris Campaign has stated, the American people will have another opportunity to see both on stage in October,” Fox News Media president & Executive Editor Jay Wallace and Vice President of Politics Jessica Loker wrote.
Harris’ campaign did call for another debate, but a date has not yet been set, and no host has been named. The Trump campaign seems to believe another debate is already scheduled.
“We have another one already on the books to be hosted by NBC on September 25,” Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign senior advisor, said on Fox. “We’ll see if Kamala Harris shows up to that.”
Murtaugh said there are talks of “some nebulous date” in October from the Harris campaign.
Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance will go head-to-head on October 1.
“I think [Harris] still views that there’s more work to do,” Murtaugh said. “What we saw last night from her was that she did not achieve the goals that she set out to achieve…
“We still haven’t heard from her, and voters haven’t heard from her exactly what is inside her plan, whatever those plans might be, why she hasn’t done anything with the country with the problems she’s identified in the three and a half years that she’s been the vice president and she also didn’t do a good job of separating herself from Joe Biden.”
Trump appeared on Fox & Friends a few hours after a voter panel for the news channel said he had lost the debate to his rival. The former president said the debate was unfair.
“This was incredible. So many things I said were debunked, totally debunked,” Trump said Wednesday morning. “And she could say anything she wanted.”
The hosts didn’t issue any fact-checks on Harris’ remarks, according to The Washington Post.
Trump surprisingly said that CNN, which moderated his June debate against President Joe Biden, was “much more honorable” and that ABC had “lost a lot of credibility” due to Tuesday’s debate.
“This is, in my opinion, the most dishonest news organization, and that’s saying a lot because they’re all, essentially really dishonest,” he added.
Both candidates claimed victory after the 90-minute showdown on ABC, with Harris’ campaign saying she “commanded the stage on every single issue that matters to the American people.”
Trump’s spokesperson said he had “delivered a masterful debate performance tonight, prosecuting Kamala Harris’ abysmal record of failure that has hurt Americans for the last 4 years.”
His supporters called out Tuesday night’s moderators, saying the debate had been three against one.
Newsweek readers overwhelmingly voted that Harris won Tuesday’s debate, which saw the candidates question each other’s records while also attempting to outline policy ideas.
Update 9/11/24, 11:37 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.