CLEVELAND _ The first presidential debate rapidly became defined by bitter and personal attacks, as President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, shouting over each other and the moderator, repeatedly accused the other of lying and incompetence Tuesday night.
As the candidates clashed over the pandemic, the future of the Supreme Court and Trump's personal tax avoidance, the policy debate repeatedly gave way to angry insults and accusations, reflecting the tone of politics in the Trump era.
"Everything he is saying so far is simply a lie," Biden, the Democratic nominee, said early in the debate, as Trump accused him of planning to end private health insurance, which Biden opposes.
"I am not here to call out his lies," Biden said. "Everybody knows he is a liar.
"You are the worst president America has ever had," Biden said midway through the event.
Trump, desperate to close a persistent polling gap with Biden as the election nears, kept lobbing attacks and trying to needle his rival.
Trump accused debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News of aligning with Biden and mocked the former vice president for wearing a medical mask at campaign events. He took aim at Biden's family, repeating false claims about Biden's son's business dealings.
And Trump lashed out at his rival when Biden questioned his intelligence.
"Did you use the word 'smart'?" Trump said. "You said you went to Delaware State but forgot the name of your college. Don't ever use the word 'smart' with me. There's nothing smart about you."
As the two argued about the pandemic, Biden quoted Trump as saying of the rising U.S. death toll, now over 205,000, "It is what it is."
"The president has no plan. He hasn't laid out anything. He knew all the way back in February how serious this crisis was. He knew it was a deadly disease," Biden said. Trump, he said, "panicked."
Trump shot back: "If we would have listened to you, the country would have been left wide open, millions of people would have died, not 200,000." Trump blamed China for the outbreak.
"You could never have done the job we did," Trump said to Biden. "You don't have it in your blood."
The president made no apologies for staging campaign rallies that have drawn thousands of people, stating that they're held outside. Some, in fact, are indoors.
When the moderator mentioned Biden holding smaller rallies, Trump interrupted: "Because nobody would show up. Nobody shows up to his rallies."
Biden responded: "He's been totally irresponsible. ... He's a fool on this."
Overshadowing the flurry of policy and political issues is the mental agility of both septuagenarian candidates.
Trump, 74, has spent the last several weeks manufacturing conspiracy theories about Biden's health, claiming without any evidence that the 77-year-old former vice president is taking performance-enhancing drugs before public events to mask supposed frailty and dementia.
The Trump campaign kept at it right into debate day, accusing Biden of trying to cheat by refusing inspection of the "electronic earpieces" that the candidates wear on stage and rejecting Trump's requests to take a drug test, charges the Biden campaign declared false and absurd.
Trump is behind in most of the key battleground states, and he is also struggling in several key Sun Belt states that he won by a comfortable margin in 2016.
It remains to be seen whether the debate will significantly shift the contours of a race that has remained relatively stable for months. Rarely do such head-to-heads dramatically alter voter opinion.
When the debate turned to the rush by Trump and Senate Republicans to immediately fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sept. 18, Trump expressed confidence in his decision to nominate staunch conservative Amy Coney Barrett and insist that she be swiftly confirmed.
"We won the election. Elections have consequences," Trump said. "We have the Senate. We have the White House and we have a phenomenal nominee, respected by all."
Biden argued that "the American people have a right to have a say."
He warned Barrett has already expressed opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and her confirmation would put at risk 100,000 Americans with preexisting conditions.
At that point Trump accused Biden of trying to impose socialist medicine. "Your party wants to go socialist medicine ... and they are going to dominate you," Trump said. "You know that."
Biden angrily rejected the charge. "The party is me, right now," Biden responded. "I am the Democratic Party."
Trump headed into the debate with voter perceptions of his handling of the economy among his strengths. But revelations in The New York Times that Trump paid no federal income tax in 10 of the last 15 years threaten to put the president on the defensive when the conversation shifts in that direction.
During his 2016 campaign and again in his first year in office, the billionaire paid just $750 a year in federal income tax, much less than the average middle-class American. Trump has refused to reveal his tax returns to voters, although he promised during the last campaign that he would do so.
"Show us your tax returns," Biden sniped.
Once again, the back-and-forth devolved quickly into a barrage of insults. When Biden vowed to raise taxes on the wealthy and to close loopholes such as those Trump has utilized, Trump asked him why he didn't do it during his years in the Senate.
Biden, frustrated, hit back. "You are the worst president America has ever had," Biden said. "In 47 months, I've done more than you've done in 47 years," Trump responded.
Prior to the debate, to underscore Trump's tax avoidance and lack of transparency, Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, released their own 2019 federal tax returns.
Biden and his wife, Jill, paid nearly $300,000 in federal income tax last year, and had an adjusted gross income of about $985,000.
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, paid about $1.2 million in income taxes and had an adjusted gross income of about $3 million.
