We knew that the first debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden was going to be fierce, but who would have imagined such a fight?
Such invective?
For 90 minutes the two 70-year-old contenders for the White House were constantly interrupted, preventing any real dialogue on issues crucial to the future of the United States, 35 days before the election.
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At a landmark moment, we even heard Joe Biden ask the president to “shut up, man” (
“Shut up! Man”!
)
“The worst presidential debate in American history,” said James Pindell, a Boston Globe reporter.
Exactly the same terms chosen by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and Jake Tapper of CNN, two veteran journalists in these debates.
"These debates always make me uncomfortable, but I've never seen such a fight," says Alison Qualter, a New Yorker passionate about politics.
Nothing intellectual, nothing intelligent.
I am sick of it ”.
Trump: "There is nothing smart about you"
During these confused exchanges, in large part because Trump laughed at the outset of the agreed rules, the president was equal to himself: combative, aggressive even, vague in his remarks on the economy, on the California fires or… the Covid-19.
But he was more in his insults, against one of the sons of Joe Biden, for example.
“There is nothing smart about you,” he also told his opponent.
Far from being taken down, Biden called the 45th President a "clown", "racist" and even a "liar", culminating with "You are the worst president America has ever had."
"A level of bitter contempt unprecedented in recent American politics," notes the New York Times.
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President Trump, clearly lagging behind in the polls, needed a good performance to relaunch his campaign while Biden could be content to avoid one of these blunders he may be accustomed to.
The Democratic candidate did not appear very incisive, having the host's question repeated twice, for example, and sometimes hesitating in his figures, but he probably took more advantage of the cacophony of the debate than his opponent.
And he was able to remind tens of millions of viewers that Trump paid only ... $ 1,500 in federal taxes from 2001 to 2017.
A big loser ... the voter
"Trump was too feverish and not reactive enough," said one of his allies, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
And it is true that the president, face closed throughout the debate, camped on his positions.
He refused to condemn the white supremacists who support him, and he continued to denounce postal voting, which would be, against all evidence "a generator of systematic fraud" ... He even refused, unlike his opponent, to promise that he would not declare victory until all the ballots were counted ...
"It's really China's fault": Donald Trump defends his management of the Covid-19 pandemic pic.twitter.com/wAvlcnYaJk
- BFM Business (@bfmbusiness) September 30, 2020
Visibly uncomfortable on the subject of Covid-19, Trump again accused China of the “Chinese virus” debacle.
When Biden reminded him of the 205,000 American deaths, Trump could only say, "If you had been in charge, there would have been millions of deaths" ...
If we cannot really designate a winner in this debate, we can say that there is a big loser: the American voter.
And last night, after this debacle, several voices were already raised in the Democratic and Republican camps to give up the next two scheduled debates.