President Trump’s first debate showing amounted to an onstage shouting of his Twitter feed at Joe Biden.
President Trump got through the entirety of the first general election debate without telling the American people what he would do in a second term.
Instead Mr. Trump delivered a performance that amounted to shouting his Twitter feed at former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. while Mr. Biden was speaking. He yelled about entanglements involving Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, accused him of being in league with antifa and socialists, and said the federal government’s top scientists were wrong to be cautious about a coronavirus vaccine.
It all served to keep the presidential campaign about Mr. Trump’s conduct in office, a proposition that to date has left Mr. Biden with a sizable lead in both national polls and surveys of key battleground states.
At no point during the debate did Mr. Trump pivot away from his personal grievances with the news media, with the moderator, Chris Wallace, or with Mr. Biden.
Even at the debate’s close, after Mr. Biden delivered a plea to the American people to vote and a reminder that voters alone will decide the election, Mr. Trump ranted about perceived slights cast upon him by the Obama administration during his 2016 campaign and said he would ask the Supreme Court to “look at” ballots cast in the election.
With just five weeks to go before Nov. 3, Mr. Trump needed a debate performance that shifted attention in the campaign from his performance in office to Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities, be they his lengthy record in the Senate or his occasionally unsteady moments on the campaign trail.
But instead the debate demonstrated what voters — even Mr. Trump’s own supporters — have said they dislike about the president: his impetuousness and inattention to solving problems like the coronavirus crisis that have directly affected people’s lives.
Mr. Biden, on the other hand, took several opportunities to speak directly to the American people, looking directly at the camera and gesticulating to viewers at home. He addressed them directly — with statements like, “I don’t trust him at all, nor do you, I know you don’t” — and implored them to vote.