One person expressed frustration that Bloomberg did not have better-prepared responses for points that he should have expected to come up. People cautiously said that Bloomberg began to recover after the second commercial break — although on Twitter, the consensus seemed to be that the former mayor was having a terrible night.

When BuzzFeed News asked the Bloomberg’s presidential campaign staff who were present at the event how they thought the candidate was performing in Wednesday’s debate, they all said that he was doing well. However, their faces told a different story.