An ugly, juvenile, boorish spectacle
WASHINGTON -- When the history is written about Donald Trump’s performance Tuesday in the first of three scheduled presidential debates, it won’t be remembered as an inspiring story for grown-ups.
This was, by any reckoning, the spectacle of an insecure, immature president behaving as an elementary schoolyard bully, talking over and interrupting his presidential challenger, Joe Biden.
Trump and Biden were told in advance of the ground rules by moderator Chris Wallace to respond to the topic in turn, allowing each other to respond or pose a further question.
Biden faithfully respected that rule, but when it was his turn to respond, Trump kept interrupting him, badgering him with insults, talking over him, and generally violating the debate’s rules to allow the other to respond.
Wallace asked multiple times for Trump to allow the former vice president to finish giving his response before interrupting him, but to no avail.
As Trump continued his ranting and raving, while Biden was responding to the debate’s question, the exasperated former vice president finally blurted out, “Will you shut up, man?”
At this point in the debate, Biden was using his turn to mercilessly castigate Trump, saying that under his presidency, America had become “weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided and more violent.”
Trump, in turn, said that if Biden were to become president, the U.S. would plunge into a “depression the likes of which you’ve never seen.”
As the debate grew hotter, Biden called Trump “a racist,” pointing out that when the president was asked about racial protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, that included the Ku Klux Klan and neo-nazi demonstrators, he told reporters there were “fine people” on both sides.
“This is not 1950,” Biden said. “All these dog whistles and racism don’t work anymore.
“This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division. He’s a racist,” Biden said.
When the debate turned to The New York Times revelations about Trump’s taxes, Fox News moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if it was true that he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. Trump replied, “I paid millions of dollars in taxes.”
When Wallace pressed Trump to “Show us your tax returns,” the president blamed loopholes that he was able to use legally to lower his taxes.
But when Wallace asked him again to show his taxes, Trump said, “You’ll get to see it.”
Then the issue turned to Trump’s efforts to discourage voters from using mail-in ballots, after Biden said he was trying to “scare people into thinking that it’s not going to be legitimate.”
Biden said he intended to accept the results of the election if he loses, but Trump did not follow his example.
Instead, Trump said, the ballots were “being sold, they’re being dumped in rivers,” without offering any evidence that has happened.
“This is a horrible thing for our country. This is not going to end well,” Trump said.