Trump: Democrats let Hillary Clinton off the hook

By Ryan Lovelace, Ryan Lovelace

Published December 20, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did not enjoy the first Democratic presidential debate on CNN and said he desperately wanted to turn it off, but he watched it anyway. Trump, who ranks first in the Washington Examiner's presidential power rankings, told MSNBC he thinks Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was let off the hook by the other Democrats onstage.

"I think she did what she had to do frankly and I was surprised that the other potential candidates, a couple of them shouldn't have been up there frankly and it would have been maybe better, and I would have liked to see Biden up, but she did what she had to do," Trump said. "I think Bernie actually for the sake of a good soundbite let her off the hook. You have the FBI investigation of the emails and he just let her off."

Trump said he was bored by the debate, which he described as "very calm, very nice, very easy debate," and he wanted to turn the channel but felt obligated to his Twitter following. After viewing the debate, Trump said he thought that if any of the other Democratic candidates want to win "they should have been much tougher."