US President Donald Trump on Thursday night turned in a more composed and disciplined debate performance, offering a marked contrast to the chaos and fury that defined his first battle with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Even as the president earned credit for engaging in a more civil exchange of views — and maybe even brought a few doubters back into his camp — there was little reason to think he had scored the kind of dramatic victory he badly needed to turn around a race polls show he is losing.
Trump’s supporters had spent more than a week teeing up an attack on the foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter, but standing next to Biden during the final presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump failed to make it stick.
Photo: AFP
Biden managed to flip it back on Trump, pointing out news reports showing it was the president’s company that had a bank account in China, not him.
Biden’s best moments occurred when he resisted taking the bait as Trump accused him of being corrupt, leading Biden to call out Trump for failing to release a single tax return.
“What are you hiding?” Biden said.
The former vice president was less sure-footed elsewhere in the debate. When under pressure from Trump, he appeared to endorse the eventual elimination of the oil industry.
Trump immediately seized on Biden’s remark for voters in all-important Pennsylvania, where Biden’s position on reducing fracking wins him few friends in a state where fracking employs thousands of people.
After the first debate devolved into a mess of cross-talk and bitterness, this session was notable for its substance, as voters could watch the two men lay out their closing arguments on almost every topic — COVID-19, immigration, race relations — and see the clear choice they face less than two weeks before election day.
Trump scored when he resurrected the parts of his persona that won him fans in 2016, contrasting his outsider’s stance to Biden’s 47 years in public life.
On COVID-19, Trump accused Biden of supporting further economic shutdowns that have crushed the US economy.
Even as the president’s allies crowed that the president’s tone could bring reluctant voters back home — or erase the memory of a first debate where even his debate coach said he was “too hot” — indications were that he had done little to change the underlying dynamics.
A CNN instant poll of the debate showed that 53 percent of respondents thought Biden had prevailed, versus just 39 percent for Trump — a result roughly mirroring the president’s deficit in the polls.
Trump’s steadier approach occasionally faltered, such as when he attacked the IQ level of immigrants seeking asylum and offered a scattered defense of his foreign financial entanglements and tax payments.
Democrats also seized on Trump at one point seemingly belittling family dinner-table conversations during times of economic strife, after Biden looked into the camera and made a direct appeal to those voters.
Biden is leading Trump by 7.9 percent nationally in the RealClearPolitics polling average
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