The First 2020 Presidential Debate Was Nasty, Brutish and Long

 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.