NORAH O’DONNELL: President Trump has said publicly, “Joe Biden and his son are stone cold corrupt.” And chances are, he’s watching this interview. Anything — JOE BIDEN: I — Mr. Pre — NORAH O’DONNELL: — you want to say to him? JOE BIDEN: Yeah. Mr. President, release your tax returns. Let’s see how straight you are, okay old buddy? I put out 21 years of mine. So show us your tax returns, bud — wh — what are you hidin'? You want to deal with corruption? Start to act like it. Release your tax returns or shut up.

Boom. He was more forceful and succinct than we have seen in the debates so far. Asked about Trump’s children — a daughter and son-in-law working in the White House with a mound of conflicts and two sons running international business operations as Trump directs business to his properties — Biden was matter-of-fact:

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JOE BIDEN: I wasn’t raised to go after the children. Their actions speak for themselves. I can just tell you this, that if I’m president, get elected president, my children are not going to have offices in the White House. My children are not going to sit in on Cabinet meetings. NORAH O'DONNELL: What's improper about that? JOE BIDEN: It’s just simply improper because you should make it clear to the American public that everything you’re doing is for them. For them. And the idea that you’re going to have his children his — son-in-law, et cetera, engaged in the day-to-day operation of things they know nothing about. NORAH O'DONNELL: You don't think that Jared Kushner should be negotiating a Middle East peace solution? JOE BIDEN: No, I don’t. (LAUGH) I don’t. What — what credentials does he bring to that?

Without a sneer or anger, he conveyed the disgust that many Americans feel for a president who has taken hypocrisy to new heights.

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On a day Trump was offering nauseating self-congratulations and touting a raid to kill Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a raid made more dangerous and difficult by his own incoherent foreign policy directives, Biden sounded confident without a hint of the narcissism we’ve witnessed from Trump:

I’m not worried about my legacy. What I am worried about is the country. Four years of Donald Trump will be very hard to overcome, but we can. Eight years of Donald Trump will fundamentally change the nature of who we are as a country. And it’ll take a generation — a generation or more for us to get back on track.

Biden openly ridiculed Trump’s claim that Russian intervention was a hoax. “He’s an idiot — in terms of sayin’ that. Everybody knows this,” Biden responded. “Everybody knows it. Nobody doubts it.” He shrugged off Trump’s attack on his integrity (“It’s comin’ from a man with no integrity”). And as noted above, he flat-out dared Trump to release his taxes: "You want to deal with corruption? Start to act like it. Release your tax returns or shut up.”

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Biden also seemed more comfortable and less defensive about his center-left philosophy. He managed to brush off Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax proposal and weak tea (“I don’t oppose a wealth tax. I propose changing the whole tax system. The tax I would put on the wealthy will in fact cost more than 2 percent”). He proposed raising capital gains tax rates back to the previous top marginal rate for wages (39.8 percent). And he skewered the credibility of candidates offering Medicare-for-all without showing their math. (“Do you think there’s been any truth in advertising on that? It’s going to raise taxes on middle-class people, not just wealthy people.”)

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Biden dismissed Warren’s assertion that her devotion to “big, structural change” demonstrates that only she will really fight for ordinary voters. Making the “most far-reaching assertions you can make” is not the way to accomplish progressive ends, he declared.

He continued to play straight to the reliable primary voters (“If you take a look at who votes in these primaries, overwhelmingly, people over the age of 50 who vote in these primaries”) and to offer the one quality none of his opponents can provide. “I think, as I said we need somebody who, on day one, knows exactly what to do. Can command the world stage," he said. "No one wonders whether I know a great deal about these issues and foreign policy and domestic policy. They’re things I’ve done.”

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Whatever Biden did to prepare for this interview, he should do in advance of the next debate. His relaxed demeanor, concise barbs and low-key confidence in the power of center-left politics that have defined his career reminded one of the Joe Biden of the 2012 vice presidential debate. Punchy declarative sentences beat long, convoluted soliloquies any day. Biden might even consider doing more of these interviews so long as he can effectively taunt Trump and gently remind viewers that anyone can make pie-in-the-sky promises, but few can assume the presidency with no learning curve.