Donald Trump on Tuesday walked back the praise he had heaped on NBC’s Lester Holt just hours earlier, after Holt moderated the first presidential debate this week.
Trump was asked on Fox News to grade Holt’s performance, and said he was average.
“I’d give him a C, C-plus,” he said. “I thought he was okay. I thought he was fine. I mean, nothing outstanding. I thought he — he gave me very unfair questions at the end, the last three or four questions but, you know, I’m not complaining about that. I thought he was OK.”
Immediately after the debate, Trump said he thought Holt “did a great job,” and said, “honestly, I thought he did a great job.”
Reviews of Holt by others in the news industry have been mostly positive, though some critics, mostly conservatives, said they felt he was more aggressive with his questioning of Trump than of Clinton.
A Washington Examiner analysis of the debate showed that Holt asked Trump six follow-up questions but did not ask any of Clinton.
On ABC Tuesday, Trump’s vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said that he had hoped Holt would have raised some other issues, such as the Benghazi attack, for which many Republicans blame Clinton, and controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation.
“I was disappointed that Lester did not get into some of the issues that have been so much in the forefront of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Pence said. “An FBI investigation, the Clinton foundation, pay to play, the disastrous events that took place in Benghazi and Libya, that never came up. We saw other issues.”
