Liveblogging the first presidential debate of 2020 from the great Pacific Northwest

Good evening, and wel­come to NPI’s live cov­er­age of the first pres­i­den­tial debate of 2020. NPI staff will be watch­ing and shar­ing impres­sions of the debate between Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden and Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump as it pro­gress­es. The debate, spon­sored by the Com­mis­sion on Pres­i­den­tial Debates, is being broad­cast on all major net­works as well as online platforms.

We high­ly rec­om­mend C‑SPAN if you’re livestream­ing the debate as opposed to watch­ing it on a cable or broad­cast tele­vi­sion net­work.

Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty and Cleve­land Clin­ic is host­ing the debate, which will be mod­er­at­ed by Fox’s Chris Wal­lace. The for­mat is as follows:

The debate will be divid­ed into six seg­ments of approx­i­mate­ly 15 min­utes each on major top­ics to be select­ed by the mod­er­a­tor and announced at least one week before the debate.

The mod­er­a­tor will open each seg­ment with a ques­tion, after which each can­di­date will have two min­utes to respond. Can­di­dates will then have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond to each other.

The mod­er­a­tor will use the bal­ance of the time in the seg­ment for a deep­er dis­cus­sion of the topic.

The debate will begin at 6 PM Pacif­ic and run for about nine­ty min­utes. The can­di­dates will stand at podi­ums, while Wal­lace will be seat­ed in front of them at the mod­er­a­tor’s table. In keep­ing with tra­di­tion for gen­er­al elec­tion pres­i­den­tial debates, there will be no com­mer­cial breaks or interruptions.

Wal­lace has announced the selec­tion of the fol­low­ing top­ics for the debate:

Sub­ject to pos­si­ble changes because of news devel­op­ments, the top­ics for the Sep­tem­ber 29th debate are as fol­lows, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to be brought up in this order:

The Trump and Biden Records
The Supreme Court
COVID-19
The Economy
Race and Vio­lence in our Cities
The Integri­ty of the Election

Notice­ably miss­ing from the list is cli­mate dam­age, which is an exis­ten­tial cri­sis that has repeat­ed­ly been shame­ful­ly ignored in past pres­i­den­tial debates. Hope­ful­ly, Joe Biden will bring up the top­ic even if Chris Wal­lace does not.

“Race and Vio­lence in our Cities” is not a neu­tral or objec­tive term, and presents the issue through a right wing lens. An objec­tive term would have been Amer­i­ca’s Reck­on­ing with Racism, or some­thing of that nature. The con­se­quences of sys­temic racism and mass oppres­sion are not con­fined mere­ly to U.S. cities.

Our live cov­er­age will begin below at the time the debate starts.

UPDATE, 6:15 PM: The debate is under­way, but it has been far more crosstalk than actu­al debate so far. Don­ald Trump start­ed out sound­ing sub­dued, but is now start­ing to riff and inter­rupt in the extreme.

“Well, we had hoped there would be some civil­i­ty in a debate for­mat and with­in the first five min­utes, Trump has shown exact­ly who he is. Will­ing to fight with lies and slan­der,” King Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Chair Shasti Con­rad observed.

Trump’s plan for tonight appears to nev­er stop talk­ing, so as to throw Joe Biden off bal­ance and refuse to allow him to make a sin­gle point.

UPDATE, 6:25 PM: Biden start­ed out the COVID-19 seg­ment by offer­ing a blis­ter­ing cri­tique of Don­ald Trump’s han­dling of the pan­dem­ic… a com­ment that most­ly went unin­ter­rupt­ed by Don­ald Trump, for a change.

NPI’s Lit­er­ary Advo­cate David John­son, assess­ing the first twen­ty min­utes of the debate, said: “It def­i­nite­ly feels like a rel­ic of a pre­vi­ous time when it had some util­i­ty. But hav­ing them both on stage togeth­er with Trump rant­i­ng — what ben­e­fit is any­one get­ting out of it except being remind­ed this is the most pow­er­ful per­son in the world who can kill us all with nukes at any time?”

UPDATE, 6:35 PM: NPI Advi­so­ry Coun­cilmem­ber Robert Cruick­shank, reflect­ing on this joke of a debate, notes: “Trump is just being ridicu­lous and act­ing like a twelve year old try­ing to bring Biden down to his level.”

Nicole Belle observes: “So what exact­ly is Chris Wal­lace’s job? He won’t fact check. He won’t mod­er­ate. He won’t tell Trump to stop talk­ing for one (exple­tive) sec­ond. What’s the point of this?”

Greg Greene adds: “Seri­ous­ly, let’s sum up the Trump strat­e­gy tonight: stop view­ers from see­ing a sharp, dialed-in Biden by inter­rupt­ing before Biden can even com­plete a sentence.”

UPDATE, 6:45 PM: Our staff (and many peo­ple on social media) thought of the late Her­man Cain (a for­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and deceased sup­port­er of Don­ald’s) when Trump false­ly claimed that there have been no prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with his cam­paign hold­ing ral­lies in sup­port of his reelection.

“Biden has a strong response direct­ed to the Amer­i­can pub­lic about the real­i­ty they are fac­ing. Trump is con­stant­ly gaslight­ing every­one by deny­ing their real­i­ty,” King Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Chair Shasti Con­rad said ahead of the debate’s midpoint.

“Biden’s peo­ple need to nego­ti­ate that Trump’s mic is cut when Biden or the mod­er­a­tor are speak­ing. That’s it. That’s the rule. No more debat­ing with­out it,” Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist Kel­ly Steele tweet­ed.

Derek Thomp­son tweet­ed: “This isn’t a debate. It’s a DDOS [dis­trib­uted denial of ser­vice] attack hap­pen­ing in front of a human moderator.”

UPDATE, 6:55 PM: NBC’s Hal­lie Jack­son, who is in Cleve­land, tweets: “The inti­ma­cy of the debate hall tonight — few­er audi­ence mem­bers, etc. — makes the chaos on stage feel espe­cial­ly jar­ring in person.”

Doug Foote offered this time­ly reminder: “Chris Wal­lace works for a right-wing pro­pa­gan­da machine mas­querad­ing as a news channel.”

UPDATE, 7:05 PM: “Look every­body. This debate is as bad as you think,” Mau­rice Moe Mitchell of the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty tweet­ed.

“The president’s per­for­mance is designed to pro­mote cyn­i­cism and despair. Don’t suc­cumb to it. If you’re watch­ing, trans­late what­ev­er emo­tion you’re feel­ing to action and orga­nize like your life depends on it.”

“In tonight’s pres­i­den­tial debate the Pres­i­dent said the ‘Port­land Sher­iff’ sup­ports him. As the Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Sher­iff I have nev­er sup­port­ed Don­ald Trump and will nev­er sup­port him,” Mike Reese tweet­ed.

UPDATE, 7:15 PM: Offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty by Chris Wal­lace to open­ly denounce white suprema­cists and neo­fas­cists, Trump passed.

“Don­ald Trump just told the Proud Boys to stand down like they were his per­son­al mili­tia. And he refused to con­demn white suprema­cy,” Kaz Wei­da tweet­ed.

“Telling Proud Boys to ‘stand by’ is telling them to… await fur­ther instruc­tion,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweet­ed.

“Chris Wal­lace would be a ter­ri­ble sub­sti­tute teacher,” Bradley Whit­ford tweet­ed.

UPDATE, 7:25 PM: This is about as far away from a “debate” as any of us could pos­si­bly imag­ine. And that’s because the occu­pant of 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue is a neo­fas­cist bul­ly who has no respect for any­one except himself.

“Folks, I have said it before, but this elec­tion is not about Democ­rats ver­sus Repub­li­cans,” Robert Reich tweet­ed. “It’s about democ­ra­cy ver­sus fascism.”

Sur­pris­ing­ly, as the debate entered its final min­utes, cli­mate dam­age did come up as a top­ic — and it was brought up by mod­er­a­tor Chris Wal­lace, even though it was­n’t one of his pre­an­nounced debate top­ics. Nat­u­ral­ly, all Trump want­ed to talk about was rak­ing for­est floors; he declined, once again, to state whether he believes that human activ­i­ty is caus­ing cli­mate damage.

Biden effec­tive­ly focused his remarks on his cli­mate action plan and his goal of elec­tri­fy­ing Amer­i­ca’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem, which is one of the world com­mu­ni­ty’s biggest dri­vers of air, water, and soil pollution.

Jen­nifer Hay­den point­ed out that although the top­ic of cli­mate jus­tice was brought up, bare­ly any time was actu­al­ly devot­ed to dis­cussing it.

“Giv­ing Biden fif­teen sec­onds to explain a mas­sive cli­mate change plan before either Trump or Wal­lace inter­rupts and moves is a dis­ser­vice to this coun­try and the world. Debate for­mats are anti­quat­ed and serve no one.”

UPDATE, 7:35 PM: Long­time pon­tif­i­ca­tor Lar­ry Saba­to is call­ing for the can­cel­la­tion of the remain­ing pres­i­den­tial debates.

“It is impos­si­ble to have an order­ly, pro­duc­tive exchange with Don­ald Trump. Stop pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise,” Saba­to tweet­ed.

That’s true: although the next debate will not fea­ture Don­ald Trump; it will be between the vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Kamala Har­ris and Mike Pence.

As the debate’s final seg­ment (and per­haps its worst), wore on, Trump’s obscene and sick behav­ior drew fierce con­dem­na­tions across social media.

“Trump is open­ly try­ing to under­mine the elec­tion. Explic­it­ly. This is hor­rif­ic stuff,” tweet­ed NPI Advi­so­ry Coun­cilmem­ber Robert Cruickshank.

“One could eas­i­ly dis­miss tonight’s debate as attacks and crosstalk that won’t change many minds. But that would be to miss the mean­ing of what we’re see­ing: a hor­ri­fy­ing degra­da­tion of our pol­i­tics by a man unwor­thy of the low­est elect­ed office in the U.S., let alone the high­est,” Bill Kris­tol tweet­ed.

UPDATE, 7:45 PM: We’ll give the final guest com­ment to MSNBC’s Rachel Mad­dow, who had this to say after the can­di­dates and Wal­lace left the stage:

“This sort of debate should­n’t hap­pen in a democracy.”

We agree.

Thanks for join­ing us tonight.

It was an ugly spec­ta­cle, but it’s final­ly over.