Presidential debate hits 'rock bottom' as Trump refuses to condemn white supremacists

The first presidential debate of 2020 unfolded on Tuesday night as a ninety-minute spectacle of interruption and confrontation, with President Donald Trump refusing to clearly denounce white supremacists and right-wing militias while repeatedly talking over and attempting to bully former Vice President Joe Biden. The moment that crystallized the evening came when moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News asked Trump directly if he would condemn white supremacists. Trump responded by asking whom he should condemn, and when Wallace named white supremacists and right-wing militias, Biden interjected with a suggestion to condemn the Proud Boys, a far-right organization known for xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Rather than disavow the group, Trump delivered what amounted to a directive: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by." He then pivoted to attacking Antifa and the left.

Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP who now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, described the evening as a descent into what he called "a new low normal." He noted that Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacy amounted to a blessing for the Proud Boys and for white-supremacist violence on Election Day. Brooks was particularly struck by Trump's attack on Hunter Biden, the candidate's son, while Biden was discussing the death of his eldest son, Beau, a decorated Iraq veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015. "I say this without qualification: That was the worst debate that I've ever seen," Brooks said. "And by the worst debate, I don't mean presidential ones. I mean the worst debate I've ever seen among adults, or among children of any age."

The debate drew swift and severe commentary from around the world. Al Jazeera published an opinion piece arguing that "America is cracking up, the first presidential debate proved it." The BBC News headline read: "US election 2020: The night American democracy hit rock bottom." Patrick Maney, a retired Boston College history professor who has watched every presidential debate since the Kennedy-Nixon contest in 1960, said Trump's statement about the Proud Boys had no precedent in the history of televised presidential debates. "That was a singular moment," Maney said. "Never has there been such an overt and racist statement as occurred that night, and at the same time, it's not surprising because that's very much in character." He added that while the Trump-Hillary debates were contentious, nothing approached the chaos of this encounter. "There has never been anything close to this where the debate got so out of hand," he said.

Alan Schroeder, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who has studied presidential debates extensively, noted that Trump's behavior, while outrageous, was consistent with his conduct since entering politics. "There seemed to be a great deal of surprise at how badly the debate turned out," Schroeder said. "I do agree it was not a good debate, but what we saw last night is consistent with everything we've seen from Trump since he came down that escalator." He described Trump's Proud Boys comment as "a low moment, a frightening moment when a president of the United States was not willing to disavow violent white supremacists." Schroeder noted that while debates around the world have occasionally descended into physical confrontations, such spectacles are not typical of American presidential contests.

The Trump campaign responded to the criticism by tweeting that the president had repeatedly condemned white supremacists and that Wallace's question was ridiculous. However, the Proud Boys themselves seemed to interpret Trump's words differently. On their Telegram messaging app, the group posted: "Standing down and standing by sir," according to Yahoo! News. Brooks warned that by telling the Proud Boys to stand by, Trump had effectively made them "the poll-watchers of this election and the army of voter suppression and voter intimidation." He expressed concern that white-supremacist violence on Election Day was likely.

Byron Rushing, a former Boston state representative, said he was unsurprised by Trump's statements and behavior. "He did it on purpose," Rushing said. "He walked in there with this prepared." Rushing criticized moderator Wallace for not being stricter in enforcing the rules. "I cannot believe that anybody who is going to be moderating and has lived in the United States for the last four years would not have a plan for the complete and utter nonsense coming out of Trump's mouth," he said. The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced that changes would be made for the next two contests, though Maney suggested that part of the problem lay in the diminished public esteem for the media itself. "Chris Wallace is every bit as capable as his predecessors," Maney said, "but the media has just fallen so far in public esteem that a candidate is allowed to override him."

Brooks argued that Biden should continue to debate Trump despite questions about whether the Democratic candidate should take the stage against someone unwilling to follow the rules. The debates should proceed, Brooks said, "not for what people will learn about the issues, but what he can teach them about his character, and the character that this country should display and demonstrate." Maney, however, questioned whether presidential debates serve any meaningful purpose at all. "Debates are vastly overrated, not only in terms of their impact on the outcome, but what they reveal," he said. "There is no situation that a president has to face today that requires the skills to do well in a debate." As the campaign moved forward, the question of whether the debate format could survive another encounter between Trump and Biden remained unresolved.