Trump’s entire world was construed from what he saw on television. Accordingly, most of his perceptions about Joe Biden were based on Biden’s inability to dominate the screen, with Trump cackling at Biden’s lapses and mimicking his verbal hesitations and stutter. He was certain that Biden could not survive a debate with a full-on Trump. The sleepster would wilt and sink into inarticulateness against his more voluble and charismatic (or at least hyperaggressive) opponent. Whatever had been wrong in the campaign, whatever challenging circumstances COVID had created, nonetheless, debating Biden was the simple solution.

Trump had nothing but contempt for Joe Biden. He found Hillary Clinton—“Crooked Hillary” now known simply as “Crooked”—almost endearing compared with Biden. This was perplexing to many because Trump’s great level of animosity seemed to have no personal basis. It was hatred without history. Trump and Biden hardly knew each other and had seldom, if ever, interacted. And yet Biden had become his bitter nemesis, a symbol of failure, whereas Trump was the symbol of success—and that was, for Trump, a mortal divide.

Biden was not only a perennial also-ran and second-rater and hapless swamp creature, but he was now old and fragile in a way that Trump seemed to need to exaggerate to compensate for his own age. Biden with his hair plugs. Biden with his face lifts. Biden with his shades. It was disgusting (pay no attention to Trump’s own myriad comical vanities). Nobody was passionately going to follow Joe Biden. Likewise, against the background of his own dubious academic history and defensiveness over his own intelligence, Trump had come to see Biden as not just stupid, but the stupidest; not just lackluster in school, but the last in his class; not just prone to verbal errors, but senile.

If he lost to Biden, what would that say about him?

Here was another piece of the constant running monologue: “How could I lose to this dummy, last in his class, busted for plagiarism, dumbest guy in the Senate—even Obama thinks he’s a joke—total has-been, never was … He’s going to be president? Yeah, right.”

It was therefore more than just frustrating that Biden was holed up in his basement, sheltering from the pandemic, his vulnerabilities and weaknesses kept hidden from the public. Weeks and weeks, months and months virtually, without appearing in public. This was frustrating! But to Trump, it was also a clear sign of an opportunity. The very fact that Biden’s people wouldn’t let him out in public demonstrated that all you had to do was get him out. All you had to do was get Joe to stick his head out of the basement—and then kick it.

This was reinforced by Trump’s campaign staff. The analysis was that Trump had gone way too easy on Hillary in their first 2016 debate. Now they were defining a new strategy. Journalists write about debates based on the first half hour, and audiences drift away after that, too. Trump therefore was set to bring Biden down in the first thirty minutes—one typical Biden mess-up, in the face of a towering and mocking Trump, was all it would take.