President Trump, reportedly, wanted a telegenic team to make the case for him at his impeachment trial. But the biggest star in the Senate chamber on the first full day of his defense on Monday was The Man Who Wasn’t There.

On Sunday, a report in The New York Times about a book manuscript from the former national security adviser John Bolton upended the trial. As Mr. Bolton tells it, Mr. Trump said directly that he wanted to freeze aid to Ukraine until the country helped with investigations into the Bidens — a central charge in the trial.

But though the news hooked jumper cables to the day’s TV coverage — raising the possibility of an extended trial with witnesses — you wouldn’t have known it from the speakers at the podium. As Jake Tapper put it on CNN, the president’s defense seemed determined to ignore “the giant white mustache in the room.”

There has been a tension, from the beginning, between the telephile president’s desire for a showy, made-for-broadcast defense and his defenders’ wish to get the trial over as quickly and quietly as possible.