First 2020 presidential debate

President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden clashed Tuesday on the legitimacy of election results, with the President continuing blatant efforts to foster mistrust in mail-in ballots on the debate stage. Trump baselessly cast doubt on the outcome and Biden said he would abide by independent certification of the results.

Asked what they were prepared to do to reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner, the opponents offered starkly different responses.

Biden noted remarks from Trump’s acting Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf and FBI director Christopher Wray, asserting that “there is no evidence at all that mail-in ballots are a source of being manipulated and cheating.”

In his response, Trump initially invoked his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, before going on to sow doubt in the 2020 results, calling ballots “a disaster,” drawing a distinction, as he often does, between solicited ballots, which he said are “okay,” and unsolicited ballots.

But voting-by-mail rarely results in fraud. And although Trump has tried to spin the two as fundamentally different before, absentee and mail-in voting are essentially the same, both subject to several degrees of verification. 

“They’re sending millions of ballots all over the country. There’s fraud. They found them in creeks, they found some with the name Trump – just the other day in a wastepaper basket. They’re being sent all over the place,” Trump said, without evidence, later claiming that Virginia mailmen are “selling the ballots” and other ballots are being “dumped in rivers.”

“This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen,” Trump said. “This is a horrible thing for our country. This is not going to end well.”

Some context: Trump's insistence that an increase in mail-in voting this November will result in massive fraud is unfounded. 

While rare instances of voter fraud from mail-in ballots do occur, it is nowhere near a widespread problem in the US election system.

Mail ballot fraud is exceedingly rare in part because states have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery, theft and voter fraud. These systems would apply to both absentee ballots and mail-in ballots for in-state voters.

President Trump said he would not “go along” with conceding the election if he believes the results have been “manipulated,” continuing to press unfounded conspiracy theories about voters casting ballots by mail.

“Will you urge supporters to stay calm during this extended period not to engage in any civil unrest and pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified,” asked moderator Chris Wallace.

“I’m urging supporters to go into the poll and watch very carefully,” Trump said tonight, beginning to slam vote by mail. “If it’s a fair election, I’m 100% on board. But If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”

Biden responded to the question by agreeing to “not declare victory” until the election if certified.

CNN's Jake Tapper described tonight's chaotic presidential debate as "a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck." 

"That was the worst debate I have ever seen," said Tapper. "In fact, it wasn't even a debate. It was a disgrace and it's primarily because of Trump who spent the entire time interrupting not abiding by the rules he agreed to." 

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said the tone and tenor of the exchange was the most chaotic he'd ever seen and could endanger two more debates planned between President Trump and Joe Biden later this fall. 

"Clearly, this was the most chaotic presidential debate I've ever seen and I suspect most of you if not all have ever seen," said Blitzer, just moments after the debate had concluded.

"It will certainly raise a lot of questions... about the future of a presidential debate between these two candidates," he added. "I wouldn't be surprised, by the way, if this is the last presidential debate between the President of the United States and the former vice president."

Currently, Trump and Biden are slated to face off twice more before the election, once in Miami and once in Nashville.

Here is the moment:

We tracked how much time both candidates spoke in tonight's debate. President Trump edged out former vice president Joe Biden speaking more than 39 minutes while Biden spoke for over 37 minutes.

President Trump refused to call out white supremacists for inciting violence at anti-police brutality demonstrations across the country, saying during Tuesday’s debate that the violence wasn’t an issue cause by the right.

When debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was ready to condemn white supremacists and say they need to stand down during ongoing demonstrations across the country, Trump told one group to “stand back and stand by.” He also asserted that violence at the protests was not an issue caused by conservatives.

“Say it. Do it. Say it,” Biden responded, encouraging Trump to condemn the groups.

“Who would you like me to condemn?” Trump asked Wallace. “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem(.)”

Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been seen in their black and yellow polo shirt uniform at multiple 2020 Trump campaign rallies. 

CNN has reported on how white supremacists have posed as Antifa online, calling for violence. Before it emerged the account was run by white supremacists, Donald Trump Jr., the President's son, pointed his 2.8 million Instagram followers to the account as an example how dangerous Antifa is.

And the President has previously defended the actions of Trump supporters who apparently fired pepper spray and paintballs at demonstrators. Trump also previously said that Kyle Rittenhouse — who faces homicide charges as well as a felony charge for attempted homicide in Kenosha, Wisconsin — "probably would have been killed" had he not acted as an armed vigilante during anti-police violence protests, claiming that the 17-year-old had been "very violently attacked."

Watch the moment:

Just as his advisers previewed ahead of time, President Trump keeps working to bring the debate back to Hunter Biden, an attack they hoped would goad Joe Biden into losing his cool.

This time the issue arose as Biden sought to criticize the President for reportedly calling US war dead “losers.” Raising his late son Beau — who served in Iraq before succumbing to brain cancer in 2015 — the former vice president declared he wasn’t a “loser.”

Instead of rebutting the claims about his views of the military, Trump sought to return the debate to Hunter Biden.

"I don't know Beau Biden,” Trump scoffed.

As Trump launched into an attack on Hunter Biden, including raising his past issues with drug addiction, Biden again turned to the camera and addressed the issue, even as Trump was seeking to interrupt. 

"My son had a drug problem, but he's overcome it and I'm proud of him,” Biden said.

President Trump is controlling tonight’s debate – that doesn’t mean he’s winning it.

For much of the first hour, Trump dominated the discussion, talked over his rival, steamrolled the moderator – often without any interruption. 

It’s clear that the President is trying to win the moment, while Joe Biden seems to be playing more of a long game. Yet at times, he seemed to all recede from the stage. To those listening – and not watching – he went for stretches of time without speaking, intent on biting his tongue. 

Judging the winner may be an impossible task. Finding the loser is easy: American voters.

It’s an open question whether any undecided voters – believe it or not, they do exist – were given any measure of clarity. Perhaps that was the President’s aim — to muddy the waters and run out the clock.

But with more than one million ballots already cast, it’s hard to see how the first debate changed the trajectory of the race. And Trump needed that tonight.

President Donald Trump claimed several times that Joe Biden wants to shut down the country to address the coronavirus. “He wants to shut down this country and I want to keep it open,” Trump said.

President Trump has been warning throughout the campaign that suburbs are at risk of succumbing to what he describes as something like an anarchist revolution – a thinly coded appeal to White voters the President believes are turned off by anti-racist protests against police violence.

Joe Biden dismissed those claims and fired back tonight, telling a much different story of who lives in the suburbs and the threat they’re facing.

“I was raised in the suburbs. This is not 1950,” Biden said. “All these dog whistles and racism don't work anymore. Suburbs are by and large integrated.”

Biden continued, saying, “What really is a threat to the suburbs and their safety is his failure to deal with Covid-19.”

The former vice president also described climate change as the kind of existential threat that Trump attributes to protests.