Trump Is Not the Man He Used to Be // ‘A huge misstep’: Trump allies see a lost opportunity in first debate

 

ANALYSIS | 2020

Trump Is Not the Man He Used to Be

 

His belligerent debate performance revealed the president has lost the confidence he had four years ago, and it will cost him.

 

By TIM ALBERTA

09/30/2020 05:23 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/30/trump-debate-2020-analysis-423916

 

Donald Trump believes, to his core, that a single event in 2016 clinched him the presidency.

 

It wasn’t the FBI reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t the Wikileaks dump of hacked DNC emails. It wasn’t the published list of potential Supreme Court nominees, or the selection of Mike Pence, or Clinton’s comment about “deplorables.”

 

To Trump, the pivotal moment of the campaign was the second presidential debate. On the second Sunday in October, the Republican nominee arrived in St. Louis a dead man walking. Just 48 hours earlier, the Washington Post had publicized an old recording on which Trump boasted about grabbing women by the genitals. A number of leading Republicans publicly renounced his candidacy. Many more pleaded with the party chairman, Reince Priebus, to remove him from the ticket. The morning before the debate, Priebus warned Trump, “Either you’ll lose in the biggest landslide in history, or you can get out of the race and let somebody else run who can win.”

 

But the reality TV star wasn’t going to walk away—not from such high drama, not from such huge ratings. In an interview several years later, Trump told me that he viewed the debate as an experiment in “who likes pressure.” Voters wanted to see how a prospective president would handle being tested, being pushed. Trump responded to that pressure. With his back to the wall, facing scrutiny like no presidential hopeful in memory, Trump turned in his strongest stage performance of 2016. He was forceful but controlled. He was steady, unflappable, almost carefree. Even his most noxious lines, such as suggesting that Clinton belonged in jail, were delivered with a smooth cadence and a cool smirk, as if he knew a secret that others didn’t.

 

“That debate showed that I like pressure, because there was some pressure. What were the odds? Like 50-50, will he show up?” Trump told me. “That debate won me the election.”

 

I happen to agree with him. At a moment of genuine crisis, with his campaign on the brink of collapse just one month before the election, Trump projected a confidence that became contagious. The calls for his ouster ceased. The party got back to work boosting his candidacy. His poll numbers began to rebound. Trump had passed the pressure test. He had stopped the bleeding in ways that kept his base intact while demonstrating a resiliency, a certain defiance, that was appealing to some voters still on the fence.

 

I couldn’t stop thinking about that 2016 debate, and Trump’s subsequent analysis of it, during Tuesday night’s Cacophony in Cleveland.

 

The backdrop was awfully similar. With about a month until Election Day, trailing badly in the polls and urgently in need of resurgence, the burden of performance was on Trump. He came into Tuesday saddled not with a single calamity of “Access Hollywood” proportion, but with the collective weight of a pandemic that has killed some 205,000 citizens, an economic meltdown that has put millions out of work and a racial uproar that rips at the seams of American society. Because voting has started earlier than ever, diminishing the impact of later debates, there was zero time to spare. This was the 2020 version of Trump’s pressure test.

 

He failed miserably.

 

 

In the wake of Tuesday’s 90-minute barroom argument, many was the pundit who argued that we really shouldn’t be surprised. Trump is Trump. The hysterical norm-shattering guerilla we saw debating in Cleveland is the same hysterical norm-shattering guerilla we saw coming down the escalator in Manhattan. The manic president on stage was no different than the manic president on Twitter.

 

But this isn’t quite right. In reality, the candidate we saw Tuesday night—the worn, restless, curmudgeonly incumbent of 2020—bore little resemblance to the loose, rollicking, self-assured candidate of 2016. It might be hard to remember through the fog of these past four years, but the animating sentiment for Trump during his first run for the presidency wasn’t hatred or division. It was fun. He was having the time of his life. Nothing Trump had ever experienced had showered him with so much attention, so much adulation, so much controversy and coverage. He loved every moment of it. Even in the valleys of that campaign, such as Access Hollywood weekend, Trump found humor in razzing Rudy Giuliani or making jokes about Karen Pence. Even when he was lashing out against Clinton or the media or the Never Trump Republicans, he was enjoying himself.

 

The president wasn’t enjoying himself last night. There was no mischievous glint in his eye, no mirthful vibrancy in his demeanor. He looked exhausted. He sounded ornery. Gone was the swagger, the detached smirk, that reflected bottomless wells of confidence and conviction. Though described by Tucker Carlson in Fox News’ pregame show as an “instinctive predator,” Trump behaved like cornered prey—fearful, desperate, trapped by his own shortcomings and the circumstances that exposed them. He was a shell of his former dominant self.

 

It was shocking to witness. Whereas Trump four years ago was unemotional in his approach to Clinton, placid almost to the point of appearing sedated, he was twitchy and agitated from the opening moments of Tuesday’s debate. The president shouted and seethed and flailed his arms in fury, his face pulsating ever brighter hues of citrus. For all the talk of Trump throwing Biden off his game, it was Biden—and moderator Chris Wallace—who stirred such conniptions in the president that he was unable to meet the bare minimums. Despite being prepared for the obvious questions, Trump was so inflamed that he could not offer the vague outlines of a health care plan or denounce white supremacists with more than a single word—“Sure”—when gifted multiple opportunities to do so.

 

On the debate stage, Trump has long benefited from a commanding presence, an intimidating persona, that compensates for his lack of policy knowledge. This was the story of his success in the Republican primary season: He was never going to be the smartest kid in class, but he was always going to be the strongest. And yet, Trump didn’t come across as strong Tuesday night. He came across as spooked and insecure. The president who graduated from Wharton made fun of his opponent for getting bad grades. The president who is charged with guiding his country through a pandemic mocked the idea of wearing an oversized face mask. The president who promised to Make America Great Again depicted the U.S. (without evidence) as a failed state that can’t run a legitimate election.

 

Trump has lived his adult life by the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale and his mega-selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking. It preaches that there are no obstacles, only opportunities, and that overcoming them is a matter of belief and affirmative visualization. Watching the president on Tuesday night felt like watching someone losing his religion. Trump could not overpower Biden or Wallace any more than he could overpower Covid-19 or the cascading job losses or the turmoil engulfing American cities. For the first time in his presidency, Trump appeared to recognize that he had been overtaken by events. His warnings about the aftermath of the election doubled for his own political fate: “This is not going to end well.”

 

Facing pressure unlike any he has ever faced, the president of the United States came unglued. If his campaign for reelection fails, Trump cannot blame any one particular culprit. He can, however, look back on Tuesday’s debate as the bookend of his presidency, a moment in our history every bit as politically and psychologically significant as the one four years earlier.

 

‘A huge misstep’: Trump allies see a lost opportunity in first debate

For the next debate, some Trump supporters want the president’s demeanor to undergo a wholesale makeover.

 

Some supporters said President Donald Trump‘s constant jabs ultimately worked to Joe Biden’s advantage.

 

By GABBY ORR

09/30/2020 07:06 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/trump-allies-debate-biden-424082

 

President Donald Trump spent his first 2020 presidential debate heckling his opponent at every turn. His supporters are hoping he got it out of his system — for good.

 

Trump aides and allies saw Tuesday night’s event, a 90-minute schoolyard brawl featuring incessant interruptions from the incumbent Republican and pleas from his Democratic opponent to quit the “yapping,” as an avoidable tragedy in the president’s quest for reelection.

 

As the dust settled in Cleveland and the Trump campaign claimed victory over a “weak” performance by former Vice President Joe Biden, others involved in his reelection effort were less convinced the president did himself any favors. If anything, they said, he might have done more harm than good.

 

 

Indeed, the leading complaint from some of Trump’s top allies after the opening debate was not the perceived unfairness of moderator Chris Wallace — though they took repeated issues with the Fox News anchor’s performance — or Biden's evasive answer to a question related to the Supreme Court, but the president’s own demeanor. Overcome with scorn for Biden, Trump jabbed and jeered his way through the night without ever giving his opponent a chance to self-implode. The strategy confounded supporters who had giddily approached the first debate thinking it would be a prime opportunity for voters to see the 77-year-old Democratic presidential nominee stumble through answers with rambling responses and cringe-worthy gaffes.

 

One Trump adviser had flashbacks to the O.J. Simpson trial, likening Trump to the football legend’s domineering defense attorney Barry Scheck and Biden to frazzled prosecutor Marcia Clark. But while Scheck may have “brilliantly” saved his client with merciless cross-examinations, the adviser said Trump’s attempts to corner Biden only further imperiled his unstable campaign.

 

Another person involved with the president’s campaign said they couldn’t blame anyone who turned the TV off halfway through the debate: “The few independents that we need, I imagine some of them just flipped the channel after the first hour.”

 

Others were more blunt.

 

“It was really frustrating to watch,” said Dallas investor Doug Deason, a GOP megadonor and Trump supporter. “He’s the president of the United States. He should have not let it get out of hand like it did and instead he led it.”

 

Deason was invited by the Republican National Committee to watch the debate at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where dozens of MAGA fans spent Tuesday night sipping cocktails and watching the ugly contest unfold. He declined the invitation, but assumed many of those who attended shared his frustrations as they took in the debate from a gilded ballroom blocks away from the White House.

 

“The whole thing was just so cringeworthy,” he said. “They’re blaming Biden, but they’re not happy with Trump. The president should have sat back and let Biden just talk himself into circles, but instead he kept interrupting.”

 

“He saved Biden’s day by doing that,” Deason added. “It was a huge misstep.”

 

Between now and Oct. 15, when Trump and Biden are scheduled to face off for the second time in Miami, some Trump supporters said they want the president’s demeanor to undergo a wholesale makeover. Instead of constant interference, they want brief interruptions to introduce topics left untouched by the moderator or to pose open-ended questions to Biden. Rather than juvenile insults, they want the witty one-liners that defined Trump’s performances in the 2016 GOP primary debates.

 

Barring a course-correction in the second debate, they said the president could permanently jeopardize his campaign’s effort to win over undecided voters and reverse his eroding support with women.

 

“He needs to show a little more of his charm and humor, less anger,” said Seth Weathers, former director of Trump's Georgia campaign and co-founder of a conservative apparel business.

 

“More quips, less hits,” Weathers added.

 

The cast of “Fox & Friends,” a Fox News morning show Trump watches religiously, on Wednesday morning aired a rare segment in which several conservatives close to the Trump campaign also grumbled about the president’s debate performance.

 

“The president interrupted way too much. Mr. President, please don’t do that in the next debate,” said former Trump campaign adviser Stephen Moore.

 

President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden look out to the audience at end of the first presidential debate.

President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden look out to the audience at end of the first presidential debate on Tuesday. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

 

In the same segment, Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, urged Trump to “interrupt less” and “let Biden flail" next time.

 

The person involved in Trump’s reelection effort said the president ruined several moments during the Cleveland debate when Biden appeared to be on the brink of delivering an unsatisfactory answer, but was interrupted by Trump before he could complete his sentence.

 

This person cited Biden’s response to Wallace when he asked if the former vice president, who has billed himself as a “transition candidate,” would support the “Green New Deal” climate plan championed by progressives. Biden, whose campaign website describes the multitrillion dollar proposal as a “crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” distanced himself from the deal — that is, until Trump jumped in to suggest his opponent had “just lost the radical left.”

 

“It was one of those things where you just kind of wanted him to finish his thought. I was like, ‘You’ve got him cornered, just let him finish it,’” said the person involved in Trump’s reelection.

 

Weathers said Trump should have refused to discuss other topics until the former vice president definitively said he would support or oppose court-packing if elected.

 

“Are you willing to tell the American people tonight whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the courts?” Wallace suggested, referring to a scenario floated by some progressive activists in which Democrats could add more justices to the Supreme Court bench to erase its conservative tilt.

 

“Whatever position I take on that, that will become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. ... Vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel,” Biden responded.

 

Before Wallace could pose a follow-up, Trump cocked his head toward Biden and pounced: “Are you going to pack the court? Are you going to pack the court? He doesn’t want to answer the question.”

 

“Who is on your list, Joe?” Trump continued, referring to Biden’s yet-to-be-released names of potential Supreme Court nominees.

 

The president “could have done something more theatrical than what he did” instead of repeatedly interrupting Biden on the court-packing question, said the Trump campaign adviser. “It is outside the mainstream of America to support packing the court and for a presidential candidate to say, ‘No, I’m not going to answer that question,’ I just think the president should have had a more succinct response ready to go.”

 

The format of the next debate is likely to reduce bickering between Trump and Biden — directing their focus toward audience questions in a town hall-style format as opposed to simply responding to the moderator and each other — though it is unclear if the president and those involved in his debate preparations are eyeing a different approach.

 

While former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has spent the past few weeks in debate preparation with Trump, admitted he was “too hot” on the debate stage, the president himself seemed pleased with his performance. AFter the debate, Trump lit up his Twitter feed with retweets of people who praised his combative style and suggested in a Wednesday afternoon tweet that the disorder that ensued the previous night had nothing to do with his conduct.

 

“Try getting a new Anchor and a smarter Democrat candidate!” Trump tweeted in response to a statement from the Commission on Presidential Debates promising to add new “tools to maintain order” in the remaining verbal contests.

 

“President Trump controlled the entire conversation … and kept Joe Biden on his heels and looking weak and unable to defend his 47 years of failure in Washington,” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. “We are enthusiastic about the upcoming debates and look forward to them.”