President Trump was worried that he was going after then-President Biden too hard and coming across as a bully during their consequential debate last year, according to a new book released Tuesday. 

An excerpt from “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by The Hill senior political correspondent Amie Parnes and NBC News senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen reveals Trump was taken aback from Biden’s performance on the debate stage and needed time to adjust, realizing he had been right about Biden’s decline. 

“Trump couldn’t believe it,” they reported. 

“How do I keep hitting him without coming off as an a—hole? Trump thought. And if I do stop hitting him, will viewers lose interest? He suddenly became acutely aware of the optics of bullying a sitting president of the United States.” 

Parnes and Allen reported that Trump chose to draw back to avoid coming off as going “off the rails.” He continued to press Biden but not in an overwhelming way. 

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said, almost with sympathy, following a Biden “word salad” answer about border security. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.” 

Trump’s advisers Susie Wiles, Jason Miller and Stephen Miller were just as stunned as Trump, watching from a nearby room. Parnes and Allen reported that they had been worried Trump wasn’t taking his informal prep sessions seriously enough and that Biden may exceed low expectations to come off stronger in the debate. 

“Holy shit!” Wiles thought. 

Trump passed along a message upon leaving the stage that he wanted to see Wiles and opened his eyes wide as he met with her. Wiles and Trump had the same expression, of “We got this.” 

“Biden is gone,” she thought. 

As Trump reached the holding room where his advisers had watched the debate, he received a hero’s welcome, the authors reported. 

Those in Biden’s inner circle months earlier were deciding whether to have him face off against Trump. A top adviser to Biden told Parnes and Allen that they didn’t feel like Biden could get out of it, as dodging the event would only add to the narrative that Biden wasn’t up to the job. 

But some still did not want Biden to debate, including White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). 

Pelosi told Biden that she knew he could beat him but shouldn’t appear on stage with him, leaning into the idea that Biden shouldn’t lower himself by doing it. Biden felt he should do it, confirming to Pelosi following a strong State of the Union address in March that he would. 

Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser for communications, and other advisers were comforted in advance by the idea of doing the debate earlier in the campaign cycle than normal. If it went well, Biden could shake up the race, in which Trump had been narrowly leading in polls, and if it went poorly, Biden would have time to recover. 

But the Democratic freak-out commenced soon after Biden came to the stage. A watch party at a restaurant in downtown Atlanta featured slumped shoulders, arms folded, heads shaking and audible gasps. 

No one was smiling, including the usually cheery Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. 

Florida Democratic megadonor John Morgan texted Pelosi that the debate was a “natural disaster playing out before our very eyes.” 

After the debate was over, Trump told Jason Miller that he didn’t “really know” that something was wrong with Biden until 15 to 20 minutes into the debate. 

“I know sometimes we say it, but I realized something was wrong,” he said. 

The authors reported that Trump was actually “mad as hell” in the aftermath of the debate as Biden was receiving all the attention from the media and not him. The fact that no one was paying attention to him and all the focus was on Biden was the “ultimate insult.” 

Trump pressed his aide Steven Cheung the day after the debate on how to change the narrative to focus on his own strength rather than on Biden’s frailty. 

Cheung and other Trump staffers pitched more friendly outlets on the idea of Trump’s “dominant debate performance.” Breitbart reported on the “master class” that Trump ran but still noted in the headline that Biden was “weakened.” 

Ultimately, Trump had to make a choice about whether to give up the spotlight that he so enjoyed or possibly help Biden by taking it away from him. 

“It would be difficult to break through a full-on Democratic cannibalization of Biden,” Parnes and Allen reported. “But for the most part, Trump would take a rare detour into the land of conventional political wisdom. He would stand aside and watch Democratic vultures pick over Biden’s bones.”