A Gleeful Trump, Fresh From the Debate, Rallies in Virginia

The day after a presidential debate in which his opponent’s stumbles took the focus, former President Donald J. Trump returned to the campaign trail on Friday afternoon, clearly gleeful as he strode onstage in front of thousands of people in a field in Virginia and gloated about his performance.

Fresh off a debate in which his attacks, falsehoods and exaggerations largely went unchecked in the face of a halting performance by President Biden, Mr. Trump used the rally to bolster now familiar arguments that Mr. Biden was not fit to remain in office.

“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance,” Mr. Trump said, “but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House.”

Seizing on reports that Democrats panicking about the debate were eager to push Mr. Biden off the ticket, Mr. Trump opined that Democrats had no better candidates than his opponent, with whom he has been engaged in yearslong hostility and whom he confidently says he will defeat despite his loss to him in 2020.

And Mr. Trump seemed equally buoyed by the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday that federal prosecutors misused an obstruction law to prosecute some of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.

To Mr. Trump, the court’s decision — facilitated in part, he pointed out, by the justices he appointed — lent credence to his frequent insistence that his supporters who marched on the Capitol, some of them turning to violence, were engaging in a political protest and were now being wrongfully prosecuted solely because they backed him over Mr. Biden.