Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine.

At last night’s debate, Donald Trump said he provided a “great service” for President Obama by getting him to produce his birth certificate. He said Hillary Clinton lacks the stamina to serve as president. When Clinton suggested he hasn’t released his tax returns because he doesn’t pay any taxes to the federal government, he did not respond with a denial: “It would be squandered, believe me.” And during a back-and-forth about his racial views, Trump said he deserves “great credit” for refusing to discriminate at one golf club he owns—when he owns seven U.S. golf clubs.

It’s hard to think of another year when those jaw-dropping statements in front of a massive audience wouldn’t have been big news. Then again, Trump also suggested the hack of the Democratic National Committee, which security experts blame on Russia, might have been perpetrated by “somebody sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.” He accused Clinton of having some kind of meltdown “at the AFL-CIO the other day, behind the blue screen, I don’t know who you were talking to, but you were totally out of control.” He insisted that blowing up an Iranian ship would not start a war. And when Clinton complained that he would soon blame her for everything that has ever happened, he responded: “Why not?”


The question, of course, is whether any of these he-said-what? moments on the world’s largest stage will hurt Trump. And after 15 months of his brazen assaults on political norms, the only honest answer is: Who the hell knows?

The two candidates on stage last night basically inhabited two different rhetorical universes, just as they have on the campaign trail. Clinton stuck to her public persona as a politics-as-usual Democrat with five-point policy plans and canned talking points about “Trumped-up trickle-down economics.” And Trump continued to flout political customs—he tried to interrupt 25 times in the first 26 minutes of the debate, according to Vox—and say a lot of wild, perplexing and untrue things that may well overstimulate the national fact-checking economy.

Clinton clearly seemed better prepared and more coherent last night, and moderator Lester Holt’s questions—nothing about immigration, Benghazi or the Clinton Foundation, and her deleted emails barely came up—may have played to her wonky strengths. Trump came off as an overconfident blowhard, the mouthy guy at the office meeting who never knew much about the topic, didn’t try to get himself up to speed in advance, interrupts all his female colleagues anyway, then tells them to wait until he’s done when they try to get a word in edgewise. Trump did put Clinton on the defensive over trade issues, and especially in the early minutes, he scored points portraying her as a tired politician who had stayed in the game too long. But he did seem a lot less comfortable and more agitated than he does at his rallies, as if mass adulation suits him better than one-on-one confrontation, and it did sound like the pundits—and the battleground focus groups—scored the contest as a victory for Clinton. She didn't seem like the candidate who was totally out of control.

Beyond the style points, though, there does not seem to be a lot of recognition of just how remarkable some of Trump’s comments were. Some of those comments have become familiar through repetition, like his suggestion that in America’s minority neighborhoods, you can’t walk down the street without getting shot, or his claim that American jobs are “leaving in bigger numbers than ever,” when in fact unemployment has been cut in half since 2010. But as I’ve discovered after attending Trump rallies, many of us have become so desensitized to his outrageousness that it no longer sounds as abnormal as it is. After all, his political incorrectness has become central to his brand; his supporters love that he isn’t afraid to say publicly things other politicians wouldn’t dare say privately. And whenever he drops a bombshell, he usually drops several more before we’ve recognized just how explosive the last one was.

For example, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen is widely considered one of the least political people in Washington, but it barely seemed to register last night when Trump accused her of keeping monetary policy loose for purely political reasons—even though the policy should presumably be even looser if the economy were really in the shambles Trump says it is. Trump also casually suggested that Obama will “spend the rest of his life on the golf course” after leaving office, a pretty disrespectful thing to say about a president, though obviously not as disrespectful as arguing that Trump did him a favor by spreading lies about his citizenship. Trump also tried to push the preposterous notion that Clinton was a fervent birther, but a less effective one than Trump, sounding like Mitt Romney would have if Romney had suggested Obama was a less effective governor of Massachusetts. And it was really odd to see a 70-year-old man whose latest doctor’s note revealed that he’s flirting with obesity attack the physical condition of his opponent. Modern presidential candidates just haven’t said things like that.

Then again, modern presidential candidates have always released their tax returns, which Trump has steadfastly refused to do, citing an audit that, as Clinton and Holt both pointed out, is not a valid reason to avoid disclosure. Clinton then pointed out that Trump didn’t pay any federal income tax in the years he had to release his returns to casino regulators, a swipe that Trump could have easily ignored. Instead, he interrupted her to boast: “That makes me smart.” And when Clinton insinuated that maybe he still isn’t paying the federal taxes that support troops, schools and health care, he again took the bait, not to deny that he’s a free rider, but to scoff that his taxes would just be wasted if he did pay them.

That was a pretty damning non-denial. But before that could sink in Clinton was attacking him for stiffing his workers—“dishwashers, painters, architects, glass installers, marble installers, drapery installers like my dad.” And Trump once again embraced the charge, explaining that he doesn’t pay when he isn’t satisfied, and recommending that the country take a similar approach to its debts. When Clinton pointed out that it would be a disaster if the country declared bankruptcy the way Trump’s companies have, he said he had just taken advantage of the laws for his own benefit, because “that’s what I do.” It’s hard to imagine another presidential candidate saying that, but then again, it’s hard to imagine another presidential candidate expecting brownie points for allowing blacks in his club. Trump also defended his sexist comments about Rosie O'Donnell, described the $14 million his father gave him at the outset of his career as "a very small loan," and undoubtedly made other incendiary comments I missed.

Somehow, that kind of rhetoric seems to be baked into the Trump cake. He denied last night that he had ever called global warming a Chinese hoax, even though the evidence remains on his Twitter account. He also clung to his disproven claim that he always opposed the war in Iraq, citing Sean Hannity as his character witness. Trump just keeps blustering through, never admitting error, always assuming his confidence projects authority. And maybe it does. He’s in a tight race to be president of the United States.

Trump’s appeal is not really about details, which makes it complicated for the media to cover him. Maybe it’s tendentious to fact-check his exaggerations and rehash his rhetorical flourishes when he’s really trying to convey a larger truth. Like when he hits her for being a career politician by claiming she’s been “fighting ISIS your entire adult life.” But when you look at the transcript of, say, last night’s contentious discussion about race, it’s hard not to think that he’s getting a bit of a pass. I couldn’t help but think last night about all the abuse and ridicule heaped on Vice President Al Gore during a fundraising scandal when he kept saying there was “no controlling legal authority” banning his actions. When Clinton pointed out that the Justice Department sued Trump’s company in the 1970s for refusing to rent to blacks, Trump pointed out that lots of companies were sued, and that his settled with “no admission of guilt.” And then he said it again, after complaining that Clinton mentioned the suit in ads.

“Frankly, I look at that, and I say, isn’t that amazing?” Trump said. “Because I settled that lawsuit with no admission of guilt…It’s just one of those things.”

It’s one of those things that won’t make the news tomorrow, even though “no admission of guilt” at least partially captures the Trump approach to politics. He’s going to keep saying things that normal politicians don’t. He won’t apologize for them. He’ll attack the media for even questioning them. And his supporters will continue to love him for them.

