It came and it went — in what seemed like a flash. The highly anticipated final debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat challenger Joe Biden is in the books, as they say. With all the marbles on the table, Donald and Joe duked it out for an hour.

Given that political pundits — with us along for the ride — like to score these sorts of things as if they were sporting events, the immediate and ongoing question — and pontification ad nauseam — centered around two words: Who won?

While both sides claimed victory — both sides always claim victory in presidential debates  — Fox News host Laura Ingraham was as succinct as they come. In fact, the avid Trump supporter didn’t need any words to declare a winner.

Instead of declaring a victor and pontificating about who she thought won — although she did plenty of both, later — Ingraham went with the “a picture is worth a thousand words” approach, and in this case that picture — actually a composite image — told us everything we needed to know about who the Trump-loathing Democrat sock puppets at CNN — AKA: The Most Trusted Name in News™ (ahem) — thought won the debate:

How you know Trump won the debate. pic.twitter.com/MrplmL8xHA

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 23, 2020

Aw, bless their little TDS-riddled hearts. Poor Anderson Cooper, Gloria Borger, and Obama stooge David Axelrod look like they’re watching a movie in which a puppy just died.

While Trump’s number-two son, Eric trumpeted the predictable results of a Fox News shock poll — shock polls are notoriously little more than popularity contests — it was clear from the outset that Trump’s debate performance on Thursday night was a 180-degree difference from his near meltdown in the first debate with Democrat-lackey and Fox News host Chris Wallace “monitoring” what amounted to little more than a street fight.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/C6HRtPW4Mz

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) October 23, 2020

For the most part, Trump stayed in his lane, allowing Biden to finish lying making excuses responding to Welker’s questions, before responding. There were a couple of instances where I found myself shouting “Shut up!” at the TV because I didn’t want Trump to devolve into the hot mess that he sometimes was in the first debate — only because we all know what CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the liberal lapdog media would do with another disruptive performance, as we saw in the first debate.

Two overarching things stood out to me in last night’s debate.

First, the performance of the debate moderator, NBC News White House Correspondent Kristen Welker. To be frank, Welker made smug  Fox News host Chris Wallace, the “moderator” of the first debate look like a partisan punk. Where Wallace at times came across like he should’ve just pulled up a podium next to Biden and tagged-teamed Trump from that vantage point, Welker was, for the most part, a consummate professional. Yes, she interrupted Trump multiple times, and more times than Biden, but to be fair — and truthful — Trump interrupted more times than did Biden. All in all, Welker did a professional job — a job which critics on both sides of the aisle praised.

Second, and to my pleasant surprise, Trump demonstrated far more restraint than I believed he was capable of doing. There were times when he looked like he was about to revert to Debate 1.0, but each time he gathered himself and waited for his turn. That, and I say this as a compliment, was hard for him to do. As a result, it was Biden who became rattled several times during the debate — most notably over his pledge to phase out the American oil industry — which his campaign staff later tried unsuccessfully to walk back.

Speaking of Biden’s oil gaffe, check out my colleague Nick Arama’s article titled Trump Leads Biden to Make a Statement That Will Likely Cost Him the Election. I cannot think of a more bone-headed thing Biden could’ve said last night — particularly in light of the battle in his “home state” of Pennsylvania.

With the election just 11 days away, this was the last opportunity Trump had to go directly at Biden — on everything from son Hunter’s Ukrainian shenanigans and how the “big guy” might very well have profited financially from his son’s escapades to Obamacare, to his flip-flopping on fracking more often than the International House of Pancakes making breakfast on Sunday morning.

I suspect the RNC has enough material from Biden’s bald-faced lies misstatements for campaign ads to run non-stop between now and Election Day. Biden asked America to observe the differences between himself and Donald Trump, last night — including the character of both men.

Oh, we did, Joe. More than you know. Hopefully, the RNC will highlight those differences over the next 11 days until the proverbial chickens come home to roost.

H/T ~ Twitchy