It’s not that Donald Trump was mellow but his focus was not on the tape, which has consumed his campaign for days. | Getty Trump returns to his version of normal

For once, Donald Trump didn’t counterpunch.

Trump came to his second rally of the day, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, as the rest of his party was still reeling from a lewd tape in which its nominee could be heard bragging about sexual assault. But Trump himself seemed to let go of the backlash to the tape that has spurred mass defections from GOP lawmakers and thrown his campaign into crisis.


There was no defense of the tape as “locker room” talk, no pivot to discussing Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions, and only an indirect, brief, chiding of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who on Monday had made clear he was done defending the GOP nominee.

A night after the second presidential debate of the general election, Trump was back to the messages that drove his primary victories: focusing on opposition to Obamacare, curbed free trade and the end of illegal immigration, as well as his normal tirades against the media and boasts about crowd size.

And when he referenced Ryan, it was a minor swipe, by Trump standards: He didn’t use the speaker’s name, instead just criticizing those who "can't fix a budget but they start talking about their nominee."

It’s not that Trump was mellow — he repeatedly referred to Hillary Clinton, his opponent, as a “liar,” and repeated his pledge to have a special prosecutor investigate her if he is elected — but his focus was not on the tape, which has consumed his campaign for days. He even picked up a toddler and held the child for a bit onstage, a move that echoed a more traditional politician’s tactics.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and a top Trump surrogate, was less restrained.

In warming up for Trump, Giuliani said a word occurred to him that, he said, he couldn’t repeat onstage. “I might say it back in the locker room,” he cracked. The crowd roared.