PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MORE LIKE A BAR BRAWL
BIDEN CAN’T ABIDE IT AS TRUMP INTERRUPTS HIM 73 TIMES IN TV HEAD-TO-HEAD
INSULTS flew as Donald Trump and Joe Biden squared up in their first televised debate ahead of next month’s US presidential election.
Mr Trump said the poll would be an ‘unprecedented fraud’, with postal ballots open to abuse, and refused to distance himself from white supremacists.
Mr Biden called the president ‘a clown’ and ‘ a racist’, telling him ‘will you shut up, man?’, as Mr Trump interrupted him on at least 73 occasions.
One US broadcaster described the pair’s bad-tempered head-to-head in Cleveland, Ohio, as a ‘s***show’.
Fox News host Chris Wallace struggled to keep order as the two candidates attacked each other’s intelligence and clashed over police violence and civil unrest during the 90-minute debate watched by around 100million people.
Mr Trump accused his Democrat rival of being afraid to say the words ‘law and order’, and slammed his achievements as one of the longest-serving senators.
‘There’s nothing smart about you... 47 years you’ve done nothing,’ he said.
Challenged to condemn white militia groups, he demanded more specifics.
‘Proud Boys,’ Mr Biden interjected, singling out a male-only neo-fascist group that has fought Black Lives Matter protesters. ‘OK, boys stand back and stand by,’ the president retorted. ‘But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about (protest movement) Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem this is a left-wing.’
Proud Boys leaders and supporters later celebrated the president’s words on social media. A Telegram instant messaging service channel, with more than 5,000 of the group’s members, posted ‘Stand Back’ and ‘Stand By’ above and below the group’s logo.
Mr Biden said his opponent was ‘the worst president America has ever had’, and mocked his claims on the pandemic. ‘Maybe you can inject some bleach into your arm, that’ll take care of it,’ he said. Mr Trump replied: ‘That was said sarcastically.’ ‘A lot of people are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter a lot quicker,’ Mr Biden hit back. ‘Don’t ever use the word smart with me,’ Mr Trump snapped. ‘Because you know what, there’s nothing smart about you, Joe.’
Mr Trump accused Mr Biden’s son Hunter of having been thrown out of the US Army for cocaine abuse. And he dismissed claims that he paid just $1,500 federal income tax during his first two years in the White House. ‘I paid $38million one year, I paid $27million one year,’ he said. Mr Biden clalimed the president’s strategy was to ‘rile everything up’.
He added: ‘He doesn’t want to calm things down. Instead of talking to people and saying let’s get everybody together, figure out how to deal with this, what does he do? He just throws gasoline on the fire.’
The debate was the first of three face-offs before the election on November 3. CNN’s Jake Tapper called it a ‘hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck’.
But Mr Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said his boss had turned in ‘the greatest debate performance in presidential history, displaying a command of the facts and control of the conversation’.