President Declares the Winner of the Democratic Debate: Donald Trump

He liked what he saw, and all day Thursday, as strategists and pundits sifted through the aftermath, the president shared his own conclusions.

“‘The real winner last night was Donald Trump,’” Trump wrote on Twitter, quoting Michael Bloomberg’s remarks to a group of supporters. “Mini Mike Bloomberg. I agree!”

And by the time the president landed in Colorado Springs for a “Keep America Great” rally, on the third day of his trip out West, he seemed interested in taking a victory lap.

“I don’t know if anybody watched last night’s debate,” Trump said shortly after he took the stage. “It got very big ratings, and you know what? Mini Mike didn’t do very well last night. I was going to send him a note saying, ‘It’s not easy doing what I do, is it?’”

Indeed, at times during the rally, it was difficult to follow exactly what it was he was doing during the 90-plus minutes he spent onstage.

During a free-associative speech, Trump directed an aide to bring him a sheaf of news clippings, reminisced at length about his 2016 victory, criticized windmills and provided xenophobic pop culture commentary. He criticized the movie “Parasite” for winning best picture at the Academy Awards — “The winner is a movie from South Korea? What the hell was that all about?” — before calling actor Brad Pitt “a little wiseguy.”

Eventually, the president found his way back to the slate of Democratic presidential candidates, saving special ire for Bloomberg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. He said that both of them had “choked” on the debate stage. And at one point, Trump put his hands to his throat and said, “I can’t breathe.”

Although a spate of recent polls shows the president faring badly against possible Democratic opponents, including Bloomberg and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Trump and his advisers say the contentious debate left them feeling bullish about the president’s reelection prospects, especially with the impeachment phase of his presidency behind him. In Colorado, Trump instructed his supporters to ignore the polling.

“Don’t believe stories and don’t believe polls,” the president said, “because the polls are worse than the stories.”

Trump spent a substantial amount of time regaling the crowd with stories of his 2016 campaign, calling Dan Scavino — his social media manager and “the most powerful man in politics,” the president said — up to the stage to hand him a stack of news clippings. The president read aloud from them individually, insulting journalists who had declared he had done poorly on the debate stage against Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent that year, and attacking Fox News personalities he considers too critical of him.

“I did great in the debates,” Trump said. “I became president because of the debates.”

At the Colorado rally, he tried to bolster the fortunes of Sen. Cory Gardner, a vulnerable Republican up for reelection in a state that is trending increasingly liberal. “You’re going to help get Cory Gardner across that line because he’s been with us 100%,” he told the crowd.

Democrats have pointed out that the president’s track record on lending support to embattled candidates is mixed at best. But Trump is practiced at trying to turn any anti-Trump words spoken by Democrats against them, as he did when he paid particular attention to remarks that Bloomberg delivered to supporters Thursday morning at an event in Salt Lake City.

“Look, the real winner in the debate last night was Donald Trump because I worry that we may be on the way to nominating somebody who cannot win in November,” Bloomberg said. “If we choose a candidate who appeals to a small base, like Sen. Sanders, it will be a fatal error.”

Bloomberg’s somewhat chastened reaction was the cherry on top for the president, who has spent most of the week drawing energy — and money — from enthusiastic supporters. According to a Trump campaign official, Trump has raised $17 million for his re-election efforts since arriving on the West Coast.

“America likes winners, not whiners,” Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president and a former Trump campaign manager, said of his post-debate confidence. “President Trump has survived every petty, partisan, pathetic attempt to remove him from office and is well positioned to do it one more time: on Election Day.”

Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son and a campaign surrogate who watched the debate aboard Air Force One with his father, said that Bloomberg’s performance amounted to a “great night” for his father.

“Bloomberg was the victim of a political homicide and was clearly not prepared for the onslaught coming his way at the debate,” Donald Trump Jr. said in remarks relayed through a spokesman. “If he can’t handle Grandpa Joe or Pocahontas on the debate stage, what makes anyone think he can handle Trump?”

Before he left Las Vegas for Colorado, Trump treated an official White House event as something of a mini campaign rally. He traveled to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, where he delivered a commencement address for a program for former offenders — but not before attacking the FBI and Clinton and commenting about the sentencing of Roger Stone, a onetime political adviser.

Trump, who approved a slate of pardons and sentence commutations this week, told the crowd that he wanted to see the sentencing process play out but believed that Stone would be exonerated. Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for obstructing a congressional inquiry in a bid to protect the president.

“At some point, I’ll make a determination,” Trump said. “But Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process.”

At the event, Trump also seemed to marvel that impeachment had happened at all.

“I didn’t do anything wrong and they impeached me a few weeks ago,” he told the group. “I said: ‘What happened? What did I do?’ The good news, my numbers went through the roof.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .