Donald Trump entered his first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton with a rather unique strategy, he admitted during a campaign rally Tuesday night.

Speaking to thousands of supporters in Melbourne, Fla., the Republican presidential nominee said he paused moments before walking onto the debate stage to take in the event that was about to unfold.

"I knew I was going into a situation where you were going to have one of the largest audiences in television history, and I took a deep breath and I pretended I was talking to my family," Trump said, claiming the strategy helped him throughout the 90-minute debate.

Trump also told voters that he refrained from hitting Clinton too hard during their first one-on-one debate because he "didn't want to do anything to embarrass her." He had previously told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he declined to bring up Bill Clinton's sex scandals out of respect for Chelsea Clinton, who sat next to her father at the debate.

"For 90 minutes [Clinton] argued against change while I called for dramatic change," he said. "I kept saying, for 26 years you've been doing nothing. For 26 years, she's done nothing."

Trump began his rally Tuesday night by calling attention to several online polls that dubbed him the winner of the first debate, despite the conflicting consensus among members of the media and political establishment who saw Clinton as the clear winner.