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Reaction and Roundup on Donald Trump creating “the worst Presidential debate in American history”

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It is being widely called “the worst Presidential debate in American history.” America just witnessed suffered through another norm being shattered, another institution being assaulted by President Donald Trump.

R.I.P. the serious Presidential debate? If you hear an unusual noise, it’s probably the sound of 1960 debate participants John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon rolling over in their graves.

Although the performances of former Vice President Joe Biden and highly criticized moderator Chris Wallace weren’t perfect, Trump obliterated yet one more norm: of a debate being a place where candidate get to lay out their arguments, respond to and critique their opponents and get time to talk to voters based on ground rules agreed to by both sides. Instead, in what is now said to have been a deliberate strategy to try and throw Biden off balance or trigger his temper, Trump talked over Biden, hurled insults, often gave Biden no time to complete two sentences and even argued with Wallace.

Trump needed this debate to try and win over (the small number of) undecided voters, suburban women, and the more wobbly Biden supporters. But again — as during his term — his focus was on his base.

Although Trump defenders are praising his performance (a Fox News analyst declared Trump the winner despite two immediate polls that showed Biden winning the debate and yet another poll was just released showing Biden the “runaway winner”), most reaction has been that of anger, shock and outright revulsion.

Here’s a round up:

Politico:

Those who did persist in watching were rewarded, in a perverse way: They witnessed history in the making. The proceeding was an epic spectacle, a new low in presidential politics, a new high watermark in national shame.

The stain will be visible for many years to come. It will serve as a reminder of the night the dam broke, and currents of contempt that have been building in public life for many years flooded the stage with tens of millions of Americans viewing President Donald Trump, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, and an overwhelmed moderator on live television.

General election debates—which have been a recurring feature of elections since 1960 and an institutional fixture since 1976—had been until Tuesday one of the few dimensions of the nation’s public life to preserve a certain aura of solemnity. That changed in the opening moments of the Cleveland debate.

There is no mystery why this happened. Trump plainly arrived to shred the official debate rules, and shed any pretense of decorum. At numerous points, his honking interruptions blared without interruption. So did his putdowns, including mocking Biden’s performance in college 56 years ago—“You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class,” before adding, “There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.” He also brought up Hunter Biden’s drug problems and inaccurately said he received a dishonorable discharge from the Navy.

Trump’s barrage left Biden with a choice. He could draw a contrast by deferring to the rules and trying to appear patient and polite. He did that some of the time. Or he could try to embrace the spirit of the evening in what often sounded like a saloon argument, at the moment when the bartender is trying decide whether things are about to turn physical and he should call the cops.

“Will you shut up, man?” Biden challenged Trump, before lamenting, “This is so unpresidential.” Biden’s most vivid noun of the evening was clown. “Folks, do you have any idea what this clown’s doing?” he asked the audience. Later, as moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News tried with scant success to curb Trump’s speaking, Biden said, “It’s hard to get a word in with this clown.”

New Yorker:

What does the worst debate in American history look like? It looks like the debate that took place on Tuesday night between President Donald Trump and the former Vice-President Joe Biden. It was a joke, a mess, a disaster. A “shit show,” a “dumpster fire,” a national humiliation. No matter how bad you thought the debate would be, it was worse. Way worse. Trump shouted, he bullied, he hectored, he lied, and he interrupted, over and over again.

Remarkably enough, it was seemingly on purpose. Losing in the polls, and with the country stricken by a pandemic that has claimed two hundred thousand American lives, the President offered incoherent bluster, inflammatory racism, and personal attacks on his opponent’s son. But mostly what came through was Trump’s refusal to shut up. He talked and talked and talked. He talked over Biden. He talked over the moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace. He talked over Biden some more. How bad was it? The line that history is likely to record as among the most memorable was Biden’s lament, at the end of the debate’s very first segment: “Will you just shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”

The Week:

In what was hands-down the most appalling presidential debate in American history, Donald Trump pummeled Joe Biden brutally and relentlessly for over 90 minutes in Cleveland on Tuesday night.

Trump can’t have helped his chances for re-election. He came into the debate trailing Biden by 7 points, and the voters who’ve been fleeing from the president — suburbanites, women, working-class people from the upper Midwest — are unlikely to be wooed back by 90 minutes of the kind of rude, obnoxious bullying and sneering aggression one expects from a heavyweight boxing match or an afternoon listening to Rush Limbaugh. But we shall see.

What can’t be denied is that Trump hit Biden over and over again, barraging him with lies, half-truths, blustering exaggerations, and a torrent of insults….

… Considering what he was up against, Biden did fine. No one could have come away from Trump’s machine-gun barrage of bile anything other than diminished. How can one respond to a man who barks one lie after another while refusing to keep his pestilential maw shut for a mere two minutes so his opponent can speak? Try to respond to one lie and he lets loose another four and drowns you out with them before you’re done.

But the Trump campaign came into the debate pushing the line that Biden is a senile old man. He more than demonstrated that isn’t true, though much of the time Biden did give off the air of someone understandably overwhelmed by an onslaught of verbal violence. Most of all, Biden came off like an ordinary politician, citing policies and data and hitting the president over his record while occasionally trying to raise his own rhetoric to the lofty heights traditionally favored by men and women in public life, seeking the honor of winning its highest office.

Trump was something else entirely — some kind of post-truth, street-fighting, full-spectrum bulls**t artist. Say anything. Dominate constantly. Display no warmth. No compassion. No empathy. Just fight, fight, fight. Kick everyone’s ass, including that of the moderator, Chris Wallace, who repeatedly tried and usually failed to impose order on the chaos

James Fallows in The Atlantic:

Trump’s instincts are taken from pro wrestling, as with his famous stunt of shaving Vince McMahon’s head. Thus Trump was unconstrained by norms or unenforced rules; Wallace did not enforce the rules, and the result, as it would be in a brawl or an unrefereed sporting match, was one person unconstrained by any of the norms of “allotted time” or “take your turn” or “respectful disagreement,” and another who was half the time constrained by those expectations, and the other half taking the bait in some way.

…But for tonight I’ll say this was a disgusting moment for democracy. Donald Trump made it so, and Chris Wallace let him. I hope there are no more debates before this election. If they happen, I won’t waste another minute of my life watching them.

The modern presidential debate was invented in 1960. We may have seen the end of its useful life this evening.

For more discussion on the debate GO HERE.