Shrinking Trump

The incredible shrinking Trump

The usually blustery billionaire offered a downright demure performance at the third GOP debate.

By Ben Schreckinger

Donald Trump, a man of many distinctions, has racked up another one — the incredible shrinking candidate.

The usually boastful businessman only bothered to insult one of his Republican rivals during the third GOP debate. He fell from first in speaking time to the bottom half of the pack. He wasn’t even the most-mentioned candidate on Facebook.

Trump may have limited the length of the third Republican debate — CNBC disputes his claim that he forced the network to cap it at two hours — but the most notable shrinkage on Wednesday night was in his own share of the action.

With Trump slipping in the polls in Iowa and nationally, the moderators and the other candidates paid him scant attention. Trump, meanwhile, held back, exercising a restraint that befits a besieged front-runner but that also raises questions about his ability to defend a lead that he had maintained by keeping himself at the center of the conversation.

Trump said he welcomed his smaller role in the third debate. “I think that’s an asset. Not a liability,” he told POLITCO after the debate. Trump said he believes the moderators backed off of him after he took issue with CNBC moderator John Harwood, who asked him if he was running “the comic book version of a presidential campaign.”

“I was honored by that,” Trump told POLITICO of the diminished attention.

“I thought it was my best performance,” he said, adding that he received rave reviews after stepping off the stage and that he believes his remarks about forcing CNBC to limit the length of the debate generated the most applause of the night. “Every single camera crew said I won.”

But outside of the camera crews, not everyone agreed.

"Donald Trump may have stopped off at a medical marijuana clinic ... he was so mellow," said Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, and "I thought Trump had nothing new to say."

“He's no longer the most interesting story in the campaign,” said Bruce Haynes, president of the bipartisan consulting firm Purple Strategies.

The biggest fireworks on Wednesday came not from the mogul but from Ted Cruz, whose scorched-earth condemnation of the mainstream media as hostile to Republicans brought down the house. Trump and Cruz’s other opponents could only pile on with less-explosive jabs at CNBC and the rest of the press over the course of the night.

The rawest back-and-forth was between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, when Bush told Rubio to show up for work in the Senate or resign his position and Rubio responded, “Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you." Trump attempted to butt into the moment, but the conversation moved past him.

It was a big change for the blustery businessman. In both of the first two Republican debates, Trump got the most speaking time of any candidate — and found himself in the middle of the fray early and often, dueling with moderators and his fellow candidates. On Wednesday, Trump got 5 minutes and 37 seconds of speaking time, by POLITICO’s count, less time than Rubio, Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Carson.

It wasn't that Trump was totally a shrinking violet. The man who never holds back a counterpunch unloaded on Kasich after the governor questioned the mogul’s fitness for office.

He challenged the notion that Kasich should get credit for the performance of Ohio’s economy, saying “First of all, John got lucky with a thing called fracking. He hit oil.”

He also brought up Kasich’s work for Lehman Brothers, falsely stating that the governor had served on the defunct bank’s board, before attacking his tone.

“His polls numbers tanked. That’s why he’s on the end,” said Trump, motioning to Kasich on the wings of the debate stage. “And he got nasty.”

Trump’s other rivals got a pass. He even thanked Huckabee.

Meanwhile, on social media, where Trump has set new highs for the share of attention he has generated over the course of the campaign, he sagged. While he was the most mentioned candidate on Twitter, capturing 22.19 percent of the conversation, Cruz surpassed him as the most-mentioned candidate of the night on Facebook.

It wasn’t all bad reviews for Trump. “Amazingly passive compared to other debates but still got off some good lines,” said Colorado-based Republican consultant Dick Wadhams. “He’ll maintain his support but won’t regain lead over Carson.”

Haynes saw Trump’s restraint as “a reflection of his maturity and the ever growing sense that he might actually be able to win.”

“Trump was steady. He wasn't his usual spectacularly interesting and divisive self. He felt like a front-runner, playing to survive and advance,” said Haynes, “He's more cautious, mitigating risks and consolidating his base.”

Trump also maintained sizable leads in the unscientific online reader polls he has cited after each of the two previous debates, winning in surveys conducted by CNBC, Slate and the Drudge Report.

An hour after the debate’s conclusion, Trump tweeted, “Thanks everyone, they all said I won the debate.”