https://time.com/5894588/presidential-debate-analysis-chaos/
It did not take long
for the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election to spiral
totally out of control. President Donald Trump simply would not stop
talking—badgering, heckling, taunting and sniping at both his opponent
and the moderator. Finally, Joe Biden could only blurt, “Man, would you
shut up?”
Trump, of course, did nothing of the sort.
It was, in a way, a perfect metaphor for the Trump
presidency: two professionals sighed and remonstrated and strained to
enforce the rules, while Trump gleefully ignored them and refused to
back down, putting on a show of dominance and creating a fact-free haze
that made substance hard to discern. It wasn’t pretty, but had you
landed fresh from Mars knowing nothing about American politics—lucky
you!—you would have gotten an accurate sense of both candidates’
dispositions, if not their policy positions.
“That is simply not true,” Biden kept
insisting, as Trump called him an idiot, smeared his family and
concocted wild conspiracy theories about everything from the Obama
administration to the upcoming election. “It’s been totally
discredited.” Yet neither the Democratic nominee nor Wallace managed to
wrest back control of the proceedings, and Biden struggled to land sharp
attacks on Trump’s weaknesses.