Donald Trump has a debate mode: bullying

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Like most bullies, Donald Trump is a deeply insecure man. You can see this in moments of tremendous consequence and in those when the stakes are clear only in your own mind. It is evident whenever someone dares to challenge him with questions he can’t just evade with his dazzling charisma. And when he feels cornered, there’s a good chance he’ll lash out with every ounce of nastiness held in reserve, counting on shock to overcome substance. This is how, during previous debates or just after less stellar debates, Trump openly talked about Hillary Clinton’s bathroom ritualsreproduction by moderator Megyn Kelly systemand even the size of your own genitalia.

Because if everyone else’s standing is diminished, it will only increase the foul-mouthed Trump by comparison. Trump doesn’t need to win any part of the arguments if everyone else has already lost them just by participating.

It has been more than eight years since Trump first stepped onto a debate stage as a presidential candidate. Through the hard work of the 2016 primaries, through to one-on-one confrontations with a former secretary of state and a former vice president, Trump’s behavior went from playful and lewd to angry and unhinged. But the general throughline – beyond the perpetual lying – has been his inclination to retreat to bullying whenever he feels even remotely threatened. This is the Trump who uses his precious little debate time to call Hillary Clinton “a nasty woman” and “the devil”, or belittle Joe Biden with scams such as “you graduated at or near the lowest level in your class.”

And it’s Trump we’re likely to see at least glimpses of on Thursday. The former president was brag about about his indifference in preparing for the night, telling the audience that Biden hid in a log cabin to rest, is loaded with performance-enhancing drugs and has already received favorable treatment from CNN debate moderators. (Biden is at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland and has given no indication that he will win or get help from a network that negotiated the terms of the debate with representatives from both campaigns.) Trump is trying to intimidate Biden before the lights even come out. in the studio light up. Which is what Trump has done with shocking consistency, treating these sacred events as jam sessions where he tackles themes and variations on his meandering rally monologues, confusing rivals.

As a first-time candidate in the 2016 cycle, he was barely involved in debate preparation. Instead, aides were tasked with making him feel comfortable. After consistent schedule changes to eliminate formal book preparation, his campaign team essentially had to trick Trump preparing the debate in short periods, occasionally during lunch – until he realized what was happening. The goal, according to several memoirs and numerous intelligent books about the era, was to keep Trump happy because a cranky candidate was one who felt insecure and could say anything.

This is what undoubtedly “worked” for Trump for a long time, as millions of viewers tuned in to the debates in 2016 to see what wild things Trump would say next.

When it came time to face Clinton in that cycle’s head-to-head debates, Trump took everything he had from an attacker’s back pocket to try to intimidate her – including invading her physical space, an experience every woman immediately watches recognized for what it was. He also tried to bring into the debate room women who claimed to have had sexual relations with former President Bill Clinton. (They were stopped.) Your oath arresting the former secretary of state for some crimes that were never fully explained caused mild horror. Clinton’s demolition of Trump’s house of cards was devastating, and his responses were disasters by objective standards of decorum.

Yet Trump was still the victor on Election Day, a reminder that “winning” or “losing” a debate doesn’t always correspond to how voters ultimately behave.

Four years later, as a president struggling to guide the country through a pandemic, Trump agreed to a semblance of debate preparation before facing Joe Biden. Still, he did everything he could to avoid sessions in which his sparring partner, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, hammered him and made him stutter. (In a twist only in Trump world, Christie contract Covid-19 during one of these visits to DC; Cristina he said it was certainly Trump’s.)

Ultimately, according to Michael C. Bender’s book about the 2020 campaign, Trump participated in 11 debate prep sessions, even though aides were perpetually frustrated that the boss spent more time at his golf courses than than in tutorials. They also weren’t sure Trump fully appreciated his opponent or the frustration of voters who didn’t spend hours in line to attend his super-spreader rallies.

Trump’s first debate with Biden was finally seen through the constant interruptions of a belligerent Trump and Biden’s now-infamous plea to the president: “Will you shut up, man?” This was also the debate in which Trump, pressured to denounce white supremacists and military groups, he responded with “Proud Boys – Stand Back and Stand By.”

Days later, Trump released he had Covid. (A former White House aide later claimed that Trump had tested positive before the debate and the forum moderator openly theorized that Trump brought the virus to the studio.) For security reasons, organizers proposed turning the second debate that year into a virtual one. Trump refused to participate, and instead Trump and Biden held dueling town hall-style meetings. During his, Trump attempted to interrupt and intimidate NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie. The skilled anchor and former white-collar litigator was having none of it, cornering Trump when he refused to condemn the conspiracy theories he renewed using what was then Twitter. It was a sign that Trump, when faced with a fast pace, insists and denies – often to his detriment.