The cable news yappers were eager to give Donald Trump any sort of win last night. This involved setting the bar somewhere in the Mariana Trench. "He needs to show presidential temperament," they said in the pre-game, which in his case would involve not screaming out an obscenity while Chris Wallace did the introductions. But even CNN couldn't salvage a draw for the Tangerine Generalissimo after he started to melt down in the second half. That culminated, of course, in his declaration that he may still try to undermine the American democratic process by disputing the results of the election next month.
He was roundly denounced in the post-game by everyone except Jeffrey Lord, but it seems like Trump himself might not have been too happy with how things went. In this sneaky clip, we get a look at Trump in a weirdly private moment:
Hillary Clinton moved across the foreground to shake Wallace's hand, which indicates this was probably right after the debate ended. In a moment hardly anyone seemed to catch, Trump tore a page out of notepad while grinding his teeth. Not exactly the look of a guy who just won a presidential debate.
Editor's Note: Another angle indicates Trump tore the page out of his notepad, not in two. This post has been updated to reflect that.
Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis.
