Anyone who ever wanted to watch Statler interrupt Waldorf continuously for 90 minutes would be ecstatic with the way the first presidential debate of the 2020 election turned out.
Everyone else, less so.
One major problem is the general state of the world, which led the topics of the debate to include racial tensions in America, COVID-19, and raging forest fires. But more specifically, a major problem is that President Donald Trump absolutely refused to let former Vice President Joe Biden finish a single statement uninterrupted.
Trump employed a similar chaos strategy back in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, weighing in with one-liners or hijacking the speaking time altogether whenever the moderator let him get away with it. This year’s first debate’s moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, seemed to let Trump get away with it even more. (He didn’t remind the president of the rules he was breaking until one hour and 13 minutes into the debate.)
Not that Wallace didn’t chafe against Trump’s blustery refusal to play by the rules. A supercut of Wallace telling Trump, “Let him finish,” would run approximately 89 minutes. However, Trump’s nonstop juvenile interruptions, which some viewers mistook as dominance, occasionally came to a head, forcing either Biden or Wallace to tell him in no uncertain terms to shut the eff up.
Here are all the times they did so over the course of the night.
Biden: “Will you shut up, man?”
"Will you shut up, man."????@JoeBiden speaks for every patriotic American.#BidenHarris2020 #Debates2020 #Vote
— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) September 30, 2020
Biden: “Will you just shush for a minute?”
"Will you just shush for a minute?" — Biden to Trump as he keeps interrupting him pic.twitter.com/AbBabfl5Qm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 30, 2020
Wallace: You agreed to the two minutes
The President gets put in timeout pic.twitter.com/Q5skHynHNs
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 30, 2020
Biden: Keep yapping, man
While being interrupted by Trump, Biden said, 'Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential. Keep yapping, man.' More photos from the debate: https://t.co/vEA8JS52Tt ???? REUTERS/Brian Snyder pic.twitter.com/Y6wO3qoDmE
— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) September 30, 2020
Wallace: Let me ask my question
The President gets shut down by Chris Wallace pic.twitter.com/IqCsXf06az
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 30, 2020
Biden: “It’s hard to get any word in with this clown.”
"Mr. President, let him answer!"
"Mr. President, please stop."
Moderator Chris Wallace repeatedly tries to keep Pres. Trump from interrupting Joe Biden.
"It's hard to get any word in with this clown," Biden says, "excuse me, this person." https://t.co/5Bl4Ob3O2t #Debates2020 pic.twitter.com/4wjCUTdzns
— ABC News (@ABC) September 30, 2020
Wallace: “I think the country would be better served if you let both parties speak.”
Chris Wallace literally had to lecture the president for interrupting too much #Debates2020 pic.twitter.com/0aVWkBynSH
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 30, 2020