Trump Assails ABC, but He’s Not Thrilled With Fox News, Either

By Wednesday morning, former President Donald J. Trump had settled on a clear message about his defensive and scowling performance in the ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris:

I’m not the loser. ABC is the loser.

“I thought it was terrible from the standpoint of ABC,” Mr. Trump said in a live interview on “Fox & Friends,” during which he assailed the network’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, for what he deemed a biased approach. “They are the most dishonest, in my opinion, the most dishonest news organization.”

Mr. Trump said that ABC “lost a lot of credibility,” “took a big hit” and “should be embarrassed” because Mr. Muir and Ms. Davis fact-checked several of his answers, while, in his view, giving Ms. Harris a pass. He mused that the network ought to lose its broadcasting license.

Most strikingly of all, perhaps, Mr. Trump yearned for happier days — with CNN.

“CNN was much more honorable,” he said, a surprising remark from a man who spent years painting that news organization as a poster child for media bias. “The debate we had with Biden was a much more honorable one,” referring to the debate in June that was calamitous for Mr. Biden.

For the “Fox & Friends” team, the moment seemed ripe to secure a commitment from Mr. Trump to participate in a debate on their own network, a goal that Fox News has pursued for months. The anchor Steve Doocy raised the notion of a Fox debate moderated by the network’s lead political anchors, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

But it turned out Mr. Trump wasn’t thrilled about that idea, either.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to have Martha and Bret; I would love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret,” Mr. Trump said, before ticking off his preferred alternatives, including