CLEVELAND â Donald Trump won the Republican debate, according to Donald Trump.
âItâs the story of my life, I guess,â Trump told reporters after his performance. By that he meant: People are needlessly hard on him, but he is so great and so fabulous that he always prevails in the end.
Those debate moderators from Fox Newsâespecially that Megyn Kelly, with her questions about womenâwere just plain unfair, Trump said.
âThe questions to me were not nice,â he complained. âI didnât think they were appropriate and I think Megyn behaved very poorly, personally.â
What Kelly had asked Trump was whether or not his statements about the fairer sex might prevent him from being perceived as the sort of person who could lead an entire nation, partially made up of women.
âYou call women you donât like âfat pigs,â âdogs,â âslobs,â and âdisgusting animals,ââ Kelly told Trump.
âOnly Rosie OâDonnell,â he interjected, which prompted laughs and guffaws from the audience.
Kelly didnât let him get away with laughing the topic off.
âNo, it wasnât,â she said. âIt was well beyond Rosie OâDonnell. You once told a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice that it âwould be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.â Does that sound to you like the temperament of someone we should elect as president?â
Trump brushed Kelly off, saying he wouldnât apologize for making politically incorrect jokes. Trump knows that this is what life is like as king. All the criticism, to him, is just a sign that heâs succeeding beyond anyoneâs wildest dreamsâexcept his own.
âThe questions to me, I think, were much tougher than to anybody else,â he reiterated to the cameras as reporters enclosed himâelbowing one another, stepping on toes and, each time he moved an inch, threatening to crush one another alive. When it comes to candidates making a quick ascent, you hear the trope âsucking up all the oxygen in the roomâ a lotâwith Trump, assume itâs meant literally.
âI, supposedlyâaccording to what everybodyâs telling meâI won the debate,â Trump said, matter-of-factly. âAccording to, you know, the call-ins and everything.â
I got so close to Trump, as he said this, that I could see every golden strand of his world-famous mane. Itâs a brilliant shade of gold in real lifeânot the washed-out orange color it sometimes appears in photos. The way it shimmers with product, it looks like tinsel you could use to decorate a Christmas tree, or the thin chains of a classy necklace you might gift your third wife.
âEverybody came up to me and said I had the toughestâthey werenât even questions. They were statements. But, you know, it doesnât matter,â Trump shrugged. âI answered them well and Iâm very happy and I really had a good time. I thought it was an amazing debate and I got to know some of the folks that I really didnât know and they really are good people.â
Before Trump even made it out to the âspin room,â (so titled because its purpose, established in 1984 by the Reagan campaign, is to give candidates and their operatives a chance to lie to reporters, or âspinâ them, in political jargon, moments after the debate ends) he had declared victory in a press release that read, âDonald J. Trump Excels at First Republican Primary Debate.â
This was a vastly different tactic from what was employed by the rest of the nine candidates who shared Trumpâs stage. (Trump was, by virtue of being the front-runner, granted the center spot onstage which is, objectively, the best and classiest position one could have.)
Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker could not be found in the windowless spin room, which was actually less of a room and more of a large corner, a few feet away from the press area, complete with RNC, Facebook, and Ohio GOP-branded backdrop.
In those candidatesâ places were aides and advisers and advocates and spokespeople, each standing beneath a large, upward-arrow shaped sign, emblazoned with the candidateâs name and held in the air by a masochistic RNC volunteer. They did great, each campaign said of its candidate. Everybody won! Itâs like Little League.
The candidates who did show upâBen Carson, Mike Huckabee, John Kasichâstood for a few minutes encircled by modest scrums of reporters and then quickly exited.
It was only Trump who caused mayhem and probably an existential crisis or two in the spin room. The same, it seems, can be said for the Republican primary as a whole.