Donald Trump has denied having a bad case of the sniffles during the presidential debate on Monday, but a new video captures every single sniff that escaped his runny nostrils on stage.
The supercut of sniffles went up on YouTube shortly after the GOP candidates 90-minute battle with Hillary Clinton ended. The hashtag, #trumpsniffle, was launched during the early minutes of the debate, and later, an actual account, @trumpsniffle, was created.
Trump, however, has blamed his sniffles on a defective microphone.
“No, no sniffles. You know, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning. “But no sniffles. No cold.”
During a post-debate interview in the spin room following the GOP nominee’s first showdown with his Democratic rival, Trump had also blamed the microphone for his debate performance, saying, “They also had — they gave me a defective mic,” according to CBS News reporter Sopan Deb.
His and Clinton’s performances, not surprisingly, were the subject of great debate on Monday night, with a plurality of observers declaring Clinton the winner. A poll of debate watchers conducted by CNN/ORC scored the event 62 percent for Clinton to just 27 percent for Trump. A number of other online polls, however, swung in favor of Trump.
Fox News’ pundits noted that Trump started strong, but his performance quickly devolved, with Fox News’ media critic Howard Kurtz noting, “Clinton has spent most of the evening on offense.”
See the sniffles video above.
