Normally, presidential candidates that veer off into political analysis end up with egg on their faces, but Donald Trump delivers a pretty solid breakdown of last night’s debate. He tells ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in this clip from Good Morning America that Hillary Clinton won because she “did what she had to do,” while the other Democrats on stage inexplicably decided to take it easy on her. Trump especially criticized Bernie Sanders for providing Hillary “a very good moment”:

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“She got through it fine,” he said by phone this morning. “It was a very kind debate, very gentle. She came out the winner.”

Trump said Sen. Bernie Sanders should have attacked Clinton more and that their on-stage handshake was a mistake. “I think that he’s losing by quite a bit; he shouldn’t have done it,” Trump said of the Sanders-Clinton handshake prompted by Sanders’ saying Americans are tired of hearing about the “damn emails” that continues to dog her campaign.

That was a curious move, and it’s not surprising to see Trump focus on it as a sign of weakness in Sanders. Whether he intended it or not, it sent the message that Hillary would end up being the nominee, and that Sanders would play along when she eventually sends him out to pasture. It’s all the more curious, coming after Hillary’s pounding of Sanders on gun control and on capitalism, which may have been the most surprising moment of the night from Hillary. Trump doesn’t mention it, but Sanders’ lack of response to those two attacks sent the same message. Sanders isn’t in it to win it — he’s in it to score a few points and return to the back bench whence he came.

National Journal’s Ron Fournier thinks Hillary won, too — mainly through deception:

The em­battled front-run­ner won her­self a news cycle or two, be­cause she stretched the truth and played to a friendly audi­ence. It won’t al­ways be so.

It took more than an hour be­fore CNN’s An­der­son Cooper asked Clin­ton about the cov­ert email sys­tem she es­tab­lished as sec­ret­ary of State in de­fi­ance of fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions, sub­vert­ing the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act, thwart­ing con­gres­sion­al over­sight, and jeop­ard­iz­ing U.S. secrets. And, even then, her chief rival offered Clin­ton cov­er. …

Pro­fes­sion­al Demo­crats and the party’s strongest voters are cer­tainly tired of hear­ing about the email scan­dal, but it’s not go­ing to go away—not with the FBI in­vest­ig­at­ing wheth­er con­fid­en­tial in­form­a­tion was mis­handled un­der Clin­ton’s sys­tem, and not with in­de­pend­ent voters los­ing faith in Clin­ton’s word.

Char­ac­ter and judg­ment are gate­way polit­ic­al is­sues. An un­trust­worthy can­did­ate might check all your policy boxes, might tickle your ideo­lo­gic­al but­tons, and might even grind away long enough to get your vote—but you’re not go­ing to like it.