CLEVELAND -- Marked by angry interruptions and accusations, the first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden flared in contentious exchanges Tuesday night over the coronavirus pandemic, city violence, job losses and how the Supreme Court will shape the future of the nation's health care.
Trump came out of the gate looking to challenge Biden at every turn -- and Biden's patience was soon spent.
Biden repeatedly called Trump a "clown" and told him to "shut up" as Trump talked over his answers. He called the president a "racist" after Trump defended his orders to end racial sensitivity training in the government.
Trump criticized Biden's intelligence and jabbed the former vice president over unsubstantiated allegations about his son, Hunter Biden's, foreign business dealings. Biden, who also talked over the president, called Trump "the worst president America's ever had."
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"The fact is that everything he's said so far is simply a lie," Biden said. "I'm not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he's a liar."
Trump and Biden arrived in Cleveland hoping the debate would energize their bases of support, even as they competed for undecided voters who could decide the election. It has been generations since two men asked to lead a nation facing such tumult, with Americans fearful and impatient about the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 205,000 of their fellow citizens and cost millions of jobs.
Tuesday's presidential debate, the first of three before the Nov. 3 election, was hosted by Case Western Reserve University as well as the Cleveland Clinic. The moderator was Chris Wallace of Fox News.
The 90-minute face-off played out in a makeshift debate hall with a crowd of less than 100 people because of coronavirus safety restrictions, in an atrium that previously was set up for use as a hospital for covid-19 patients.
The president drew a lecture from Wallace, who pleaded with both men to stop interrupting. Biden pushed back against Trump, sometimes looking right at the camera to directly address viewers rather than the president and snapping, "It's hard to get a word in with this clown."
Trump kept up his badgering of Biden, drawing a string of rejoinders from the Democrat, including a plea to "just shush for a minute" at the half-hour mark.
At other points, the two candidates dialed down their rhetoric, but then the interruptions would spring up again.
THE PANDEMIC
The vitriol exploded into the open when Biden attacked Trump's handling of the pandemic, saying that the president "waited and waited" to act when the virus reached America's shores and "still doesn't have a plan." Biden told Trump to "get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap" and go in his golf cart to the Oval Office to come up with a bipartisan plan to save people.
Trump responded, declaring that "I'll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did. You don't have it in your blood."
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"I know how to do the job," was the response from Biden, who served eight years as former President Barack Obama's vice president.
"You don't panic. He panicked," Biden said. "He still doesn't have a plan."
"Wrong," Trump interjected.
After enduring Biden's criticism of his coronavirus response, Trump seized on a Biden remark that his management of the crisis would be "smart."
"Don't ever use the word 'smart' with me," Trump said, accusing Biden of forgetting where he went to college.
Biden chuckled. "Oh give me a break."
"There's nothing smart about you, Joe," Trump added.
The pandemic's effects were in plain sight, with the candidates' lecterns spaced far apart, all of the guests in the small crowd tested and the traditional opening handshake scrapped. The men did not shake hands and, while neither candidate wore a mask to take the stage, their families did sport face coverings.
Trump and Biden argued about whether Americans should wear masks to combat spread of the virus. Many people in Trump's entourage in the audience didn't wear one, and when an official from the Cleveland Clinic, which is co-hosting the debate, offered them masks, they refused.
Biden's entourage wore masks. He noted that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month that near-universal mask wearing would end the U.S. outbreak. Trump said other officials had claimed the "opposite."
"No serious person said the opposite," Biden said.
"I think masks are OK," Trump said. "I mean I have a mask right here. When needed, I wear masks. I don't wear masks like him."
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HIGH COURT, TAXES
Trump tried to define his ideas for replacing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on health care in the debate's early moments and defended his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, declaring that "I was not elected for three years, I'm elected for four years."
"We won the election. Elections have consequences. We have the Senate. We have the White House, and we have a phenomenal nominee, respected by all."
Trump criticized Biden over Biden's refusal to comment on whether he would try to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation if Barrett is confirmed to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Hours before the debate began, Biden released his most recent tax returns, signaling that he wanted new revelations about the president's taxes at center stage for their first face-to-face encounter.
"Is it true that you paid $750 in federal income taxes" in 2016 and 2017, Wallace asked Trump, a reference to The New York Times reporting beginning Sunday on tax records the president has kept secret.
Trump didn't directly answer, saying he paid millions of dollars in taxes. "Show us your tax returns," Biden interjected.
"I paid $38 million one year, I paid $27 million one year," Trump said, without specifying which years.
"Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?" Wallace repeated.
"Millions of dollars," Trump answered. "And you'll get to see it."
ON CHINA
After the discussion of Trump's taxes, a question about Trump's economic record degenerated into arguing -- again in personal and insulting terms -- over China and the two candidates' families.
"You take a look at what he's actually done. He's done very little," Biden said. "China's perfected the art of the steal."
Trump used the criticism as an opening to attack Biden's son, Hunter Biden, demanding to know whether he had taken "billions of dollars" from China and alleging "the mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son three and a half million dollars."
Biden audibly sighed. "That is not true," he said. "It's totally discredited."
Trump insisted the claim was only discredited by the media.
"It's hard to get any word in with this clown," Biden said. "His family, we could talk about all night."
Trump said some of his family had given up comfortable lives to move to Washington and help him govern. Wallace ended the back-and-forth by admonishing the two men not to interrupt each other, focusing on Trump, who he said had been the worst about it.
Roughly 50 minutes into the debate, Wallace's frustration came to a boil, as he tried to remain even-keeled and stop the rivals from talking over each other.
"Gentlemen, I hate to raise my voice, but why should I be any different than the two of you?" Wallace said.
As the conversation moved to race, Biden accused Trump of walking away from the American promise of equity for all and making a race-based appeal.
"This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division," Biden said.
Recent months have seen major protests after the deaths of Black people at the hands of police. And Biden said there is systemic racist injustice in this country and while the vast majority of police officers are "decent, honorable men and women," there are "bad apples" and people have to be held accountable.
LAW AND ORDER
Trump in turn claimed that Biden's work on a federal crime bill treated the African American population "about as bad as anybody in this country." The president pivoted to his hardline focus on those protesting racial injustice and accused Biden of being afraid to use the words "law and order," out of fear of alienating the left.
"Violence is never appropriate," Biden said. "Peaceful protest is."
After Wallace asked Trump to explain actions he's taken to end racial sensitivity training in the government and by federal contractors, Trump said "I ended it because it's racist" and "they were teaching people to hate our country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen."
"Nobody's doing that," Biden responded. "He's the racist."
With just 35 days until the election, and early voting already underway in some states, Biden stepped onto the stage holding leads in the polls -- significant in national surveys, close in some battleground states -- and looking to expand his support among suburban voters, women and senior citizens. Surveys show the president has lost significant ground among those groups since 2016, but Biden faces his own questions encouraged by Trump's withering attacks.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Darlene Superville, Will Weissert, Michelle L. Price, Jill Colvin, Aamer Madhani, Pablo Martinez Monsivais and Zeke Miller of The Associated Press; and by Jennifer Epstein and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News.
