For Lindsey Graham, there was only one word for Donald Trump’s performance during Tuesday night’s debate against Kamala Harris: “Disaster.” Trump was unprepared and his debate team should be fired, Graham told The Bulwark Podcast host Tim Miller.

However, other right-wing figures claimed that the debate hosts were the bad guys of the night, making it a “three-on-one attack” on Trump — as the former president himself put it, refusing to commit to a second debate.

Even Fox News’ Jesse Watters acknowledged Trump’s chaotic performance, claiming that Americans didn’t think “any of these people won,” while still trying to portray Trump as a conspicuous giant.

“He had moments where you thought, ‘Oh my God, where are we going with this,’ and then he just had some amazing knockouts,” Watters said. “And so this race just got more exciting.”

Laura Ingraham acknowledged the same: “Did Donald Trump miss some opportunities? Absolutely.”

Still, she claimed, “ABC did help Kamala Harris.”

The same was true of Sean Hannity, who tried to portray ABC as “the biggest loser in the debate.” He said the network hadn’t pushed Harris’ past policies hard enough and that he still didn’t know much about her.

“In many, many ways, the passage that she’s been given is the greatest disservice, I think, to the American people tonight,” Hannity said. “That’s on ABC-Disney.” (Disney is ABC’s parent company.)

Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh attempted to provide a dose of reality to an X user who was baffled by his belief that Trump had “talked too much.”

“Should I lie to you and tell you this was a brilliant achievement by Trump?” Walsh asked.

After the debate, right-wing politicians, pundits and journalists scrambled to defend the former president and attack those they perceived as being against him, primarily ABC. Throughout Tuesday night, a consortium of conservatives alleged that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were in the pocket for Harris, while Trump continued to sway during the debate.

“It must be so nice to have the moderators provide cover as candidates,” podcaster Megyn Kelly wrote on X. “It makes it so much easier.”

“These moderators are an abject failure and this is one of the most biased, unfair debates I have ever seen,” she later wrote. “Shame on you @ABC.”

“The moderators are letting @KamalaHarris get away with murder in this debate,” Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, wrote on X. “She repeats every debunked left-wing talking point from the past decade. Yet moderators always make sure to make bogus ‘corrections’ to Trump after he makes a point.”

“These are elite Manhattan debate questions – the American people are hurting and can’t afford groceries and deserve answers on how to make things better,” Meghan McCain wrote on X. “I don’t know what this is, but these moderators are doing the American people a disservice.”

“It’s laughable how ABC choreographed this to help VP Harris, but it doesn’t work because it’s so obvious,” radio host Hugh Hewitt wrote on X.

“David Muir criticizes and attacks Trump more than Kamala does,” Glenn Greenwald wrote on X. “Kamala can relax because the ABC ‘moderators’ handle the debate for her.”

Muir and Davis continually fact-checked the former president, who spread one falsehood after another, from the idea that parents in some states can choose to kill a baby after it is born to the claim that illegal immigrants eat pets.

But even Fox News commentator Brit Hume had to admit it: Harris made the landing — and proved, he said, that she wasn’t “the absolute idiot many of us thought she was.”

“She was calm, she was prepared, she remained calm,” Hume said. “She saw advantages, she seized them. She successfully lured him, that is the story of the debate.”