Top Republican senator vents about Trump’s debate performance: ‘A missed opportunity’

PHILADELPHIA — One of Donald Trump’s most prominent allies panned his debate performance as “a missed opportunity” and said it was crucial that the former president better defend his own administration if there’s another debate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), speaking to a handful of reporters in the post-debate spin room, recalled venting at the television the answer Trump failed to deliver when Vice President Kamala Harris assailed the former president.

“She said, ‘We inherited a mess,’” Graham said. “I was yelling and screaming, ‘No you didn’t — you inherited low gas prices, a secure border, a vaccine for Covid, you inherited the biggest Mideast change of my lifetime, the Abraham Accords, and now everything is to shit.’”

Trump offered no such answer. And Graham made no effort to hide his disappointment.

He was hardly the only Republican alarmed by the former president’s bait-taking and persistent inability to turn the conversation back to issues like inflation and President Joe Biden. It’s just that Graham, as is his wont, says in public what many in his party will only murmur in private.

Emerging from behind a curtain after holding an extensive off-air conversation with Fox News personality Sean Hannity out of earshot, the ever-plotting Republican senator unspooled a shorthand for what he thought Trump should do if there’s another debate.

“Tighten up,” Graham said before offering advice as though Trump was standing beside him: “’What I did, what you got and where we’re at.’”

Pining for what could have been, he added: “What I was hoping for was: ‘When I left we had the most secure border in 40 years, mortgage rates were below three percent, gas was $1.87, the Abraham Accords, energy independent, you screwed it all up.’”

Graham would not go as far as saying he thought Trump should make personnel changes, saying, “it’s not the debate team.”

What he couldn’t quite say directly was that it was the candidate’s fault.

But Graham conceded the debate here marked a “missed opportunity,” because Trump “had a chance to lay it all out.”

Then it was back to the coaching.

“The central theme is ‘a nation in decline and if you could have done it why haven’t you done it?’” Graham said.

Had he told Trump as much?

“I told him: ‘Your closing was great. If you do another debate, just effectively prosecute what you had and where we’re at,’” Graham said, referring to the country before and after Trump.

And would he call Trump tomorrow to reinforce his message?

“Yes,” Graham immediately shot back.

The senator, and other unnerved Republicans, may get their wish for another debate.

Emerging buoyantly after the debate, Harris’ aides and surrogates came bearing a clear message: They wanted another face off in October.

“Bring it on!” said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat. “She should do a second debate.”