Republican nominee Donald Trump praised moderator Lester Holt following Monday night’s debate, despite fielding tough questions from the NBC News anchor. 

{mosads}”I thought Lester did a great job,” Trump told CNN. “Honestly, I thought he did a great job. I thought [the questions] were very fair.”

Trump’s assessment of Holt is different from that of his surrogates and GOP operatives, however, who said the anchor was tougher on the businessman than on Democratic nomionee Hillary Clinton. 

The moderator put Trump on the defensive multiple times, pressing him on his claims that he opposed the Iraq War, his refusal to release his tax returns, his support of stop-and-frisk policing tactics and his “birther” crusade against President Obama.

Breitbart News, which is close to the Trump campaign, published a post-debate piece titled, “Five Times Lester Holt Shilled For Hillary At First Debate” 

NBC’s @LesterHoltNBC consistently interrupted Trump, but not Hillary.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) September 27, 2016

Trump surrogates already saying Lester Holt overcompensated to bad reaction to Matt Lauer

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 27, 2016

Holt interrupted Trump 30 times during the debate, according to a count compiled by the left-leaning news site Vox. Clinton was interrupted 19 times by the moderator. 

@sarahkliff But couldn’t Clinton have stood to interrupt him more?

— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) September 27, 2016