What Went Down During The First Presidential Debate

Biden is making one of those direct-to-camera pleas, again on the COVID-19 section, talking about the empty kitchen chairs that Americans might be sitting across from because of coronavirus deaths. And Trump keeps interrupting him. It’s a really odd, disconcerting dynamic. Trump has been making interjections, trying to compare the 206,000 COVID-19 deaths to the swine flu during the Obama administration, which was, obviously, nowhere near as deadly as COVID-19.

It’s really hard to see how Trump’s argument that “Biden would have been worse” will land. Biden wasn’t president. Trump was. This is what happened. Hypothetical alternate realities seem really weak as a defense.

Biden said up front that he is not going to continuously fact-check Trump. It appears his strategy is to laugh repeatedly while Trump is talking, which gets picked up on the split-screen and seems to distract Trump but doesn’t get dinged as an interruption.