As Republican “spinners” milled with reporters under the TV screens and bright lights backstage at thepresidential debate, a strange commotion broke out.
Heated discussions overDonald Trump’s performance in his long-awaited clash with Kamala Harris were suddenly broken off as people began to sprint towards a familiar figure entering the room.
Trump himself – sweeping blonde hair, navy blue suite and distinctive red tie – had arrived to take matters into his own hands.
The story of a bruising encounter with his rival was emerging, and the headlines were already being written, when he made the unscheduled and unusual intervention.
“It was the best debate I’ve ever had,” he insisted, adding that he had a “great night”.
He went on to accuse ABC of running an “unfair” event, with biased moderators.
Despite his best efforts, the former president’s performance on the debate stage was still interpreted, even by his allies in the US media,as an embarrassment.
Ms Harris’s attempts to rile him up with jibes about the size of the crowds at his rallies and his unpopularity with world leaders worked a charm.
“You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer’,” she said.
“And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” She said he had been “fired by 81 million people” at the last election, and said other world leaders thought he was a “disgrace”.
In reply, Trump mangled his best attack lines, looked rattled on camera, and waffled aboutmigrants eating the pets of Americans in Ohio.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said.
Trump’s performance was in stark contrast to hisclash with Joe Biden in June, where he looked cool and in command, compared with the elderly president.
On Tuesday, he instead became the Trump of his 2016 campaign – becoming angry with his opponent and inventingbizarre conspiracy theories to fight his way out of a corner.
During one exchange on foreign policy, he retorted that Ms Harris “hates” Jews and Arabs and they will all be “blown up” if she is president.
In another, on healthcare, he was asked how he would replace the Affordable Care Act. “I have concepts of a plan,” he replied, uneasily, to guffaws from the media centre.
Brit Hume, a Fox News commentator, summarised the collective view in the moments after the debate. “Make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night,” he said.
“He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him, something I am sure his advisers had begged him not to do.”
Those advisers looked on, ashen-faced, as Trump was asked again by the conservative news anchor Sean Hannity whether he would consider another debate with Harris in the next eight weeks.
“I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it,” he replied.
Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s allies in Congress, told reporters the event was a “missed opportunity” to lay out Ms Harris’s record to voters, and to attack her on Mr Biden’s handling of the economy.
Vivek Ramaswasmy conceded that Ms Harris had performedbetter than the Trump campaign expected, but said the former president had scored some points on policy that would be drowned out by talk of his defeat.
He also made hay of some concerning moments for Harris voters, not least her unwillingness to commit to more than a few headline policies.
She also struggled to distance herself from her unpopular predecessor at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Trump, in a rare moment of strong attack, told the cameras: “She is Biden.”
“I am not Joe Biden,” she replied. “And I’m certainly not Donald Trump. What I do offer is a new generation of leadership.”
But on several of the policy areas she discussed, there was little to distinguish her from the administration she has served for almost four years.
Her opening words, on her plan to “lift up the middle class”, were borrowed from Mr Biden’s stump speeches, and her responses to questions on thewars in Gaza and Ukraine were messages of continuity, not change. Her claims Trump is planning a “Project 2025 agenda” were taken from the Biden campaign’s strategy earlier this year.
As entertaining as Trump and Ms Harris’s performance was, it would be easy to overstate the importance of the Philadelphia debate.
Eight weeks before polling day, surveys in theseven key swing states show most voters have made up their mind about the candidates.
Fewer than a million voters will cast ballots in swing districts that could make a difference to the overall result, and most of those will not be swayed from their political convictions by a 100-minute debate performance – bungled or otherwise.
The political hysteria of Tuesday night was replaced by a forced solemnity on Wednesday morning, when the two candidates came face to face again at a memorial for victims of the September 11 attacks in New York.
Ms Harris shook her rival’s hand, as she had done as a “power move” on the debate stage the night before, and appeared to thank him repeatedly.
The pair then stood a few feet apart, separated by Mr Biden and Michael Bloomberg, who was elected as the city’s mayor weeks after the 2001 terror attack.
If Trump does not agree to debate Ms Harris again, the memorial could be the last time they appear together before election day.
The prospect of a second debate was the hot topic of discussion back in Washington, where Trump’s poor performance came as a shock.
Republicans, aghast, hope he could make up for lost time in another round with Ms Harris hosted by Fox News, while Jen O’Malley Dillon, Ms Harris’s campaign manager, asked the question many members of the GOP were thinking to themselves.
“Vice-president Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”