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- Chris Wallace, the Fox News anchor who moderated the first presidential debate on Tuesday night called the event a “terrible missed opportunity,” The New York Times reported.
- President Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted both the Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Wallace throughout the 90-minute debate.
- The debate garnered criticism and worry from both domestic and international observers.
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Chris Wallace called the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden a “terrible missed opportunity,” The New York Times reported.
“I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks the way it did,” Wallace, a “Fox News Sunday” anchor who moderated the debate said.
The debate between Trump, the Republican nominee, and Biden was a chaotic and tense 90-minute affair, with Trump relentlessly talking over and insulting Biden, prompting the former vice president to scold Trump within the first 20 minutes of the debate.
“Would you shut up, man?” Biden told Trump.
Trump continued to relentlessly interrupt both Biden and Wallace for the rest of the debate. Wallace at one point jokingly suggested that Trump switch places with him to moderate.
"I'm just disappointed with the results. For me, but much more importantly, I'm disappointed for the country, because it could have been a much more useful evening than it turned out to be," Wallace told The Times about the debate.
Biden would go on to call Trump, the "worst president that America has ever had" during another one of their heated exchanges Tuesday night.
The debate garnered criticism and worry from both domestic and international watchers.
France's Le Monde described it as "worrying for American democracy," and The Guardian in the UK called the debate "a national humiliation."
Wallace was incredulous in his interview with The Times: "I guess I didn't realize — and there was no way you could, hindsight being 20/20 — that this was going to be the president's strategy, not just for the beginning of the debate but the entire debate."
Wallace said that while he initially thought Trump directly speaking to Biden was setting the stage for an actual debate, he grew more alarmed as Trump refused to back down.
"If I didn't try to seize control of the debate — which I don't know that I ever really did — then it was going to just go completely off the tracks," he told the newspaper.
Wallace said he did the best he could and advised the moderators for the upcoming debates to "be quicker to realize what's going on than I was. I didn't have that advance warning."
- Read more:
- The first presidential debate was an embarrassment for the US and international news outlets came down on it harshly
- The first 2020 debate was a political horror show as Trump tried to bully Biden and the former vice president told him to 'shut up'
- Biden calls Trump the 'worst president America has ever had' in Tuesday's chaotic debate