The first Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was a complete waste of time. 

The once revered debate platform lost all its charm on Thursday night. Neither candidate was able to fully reveal their plans and policies post-election since they were too busy flinging epithets towards each other. The debate drifted beyond barbaric limits, especially thanks to President Trump.

Some audiences were enraptured by the impromptu exchanges between Trump and Biden, but saw the debate overall as unorthodox. They could not have been more correct, since a candidate’s oratory skills or decorum does not correlate with their ability to become a Commander-in-Chief. However, if these viewers cared to reflect upon the content of the debate, they would find themselves deluded through and through.

Trump seemed to have no plan at all. He was a loudmouth bully using dysfunctional, worn-out tactics to intimidate his opponent. He carried a cornucopia of lies, out of which came baseless statistics and rebuttals that came in handy while lashing out at and interrupting Biden.

Trump once again portrayed himself as the diabolical catalyst of political polarization. His constant criticism of Democrats was the worst excuse for his failures of handling the COVID-19 spread, pandemic-fueled recession and police brutality. Failing also to condemn white supremacist groups, insteadblaming the protests and upheavals solely on “ANTIFA”, displayed his incompetency and slandered the essence of ‘E Pluribus Unum’.

His malicious lies were as misleading as his frequent interruptions. The lies ranged from the loss of ballots due to absentee voting, to distributing vaccines to Democrats alone before elections. None of these lies contained an ounce of honesty. He also lied about all of his accomplishments, too. He boasted about how jobs soared after he took office when, in reality, manufacturing jobs declined in the United States. His exaggerated importance of the stock market over public health made him nothing short of a lunatic, because the stock markets are not the economy. 

Biden, on the other hand, maintained a calm demeanor and found some time between Trump’s interruptions to outline his plans. His plans post-election included increasing corporate taxes, better controlling climate change and creating new jobs and infrastructures while the country gradually shifts from using fossil fuels to renewable energy. 

It was arrant nonsense to hear Trump talk about providing clean drinking water and air for the people, as since he repealed every Obama administration rule that protected surface water resources and reduced carbon emissions, such as the Clean Water Rule and Clean Air Act. With no concrete plan to move forward, these moves by Trump could have put the lives of many Americans at risk.

On grave issues like the wildfires that have been destroying forests of California, the incumbent president continued his tradition of ignoring science. According to Trump, the wildfires had “no connection” with climate change, but were instead due to inadequate forest management. Although he did not comment on it, Trump’s views on the increasing rate of floods and tornadoes as a result of climate change would have been equally preposterous.

All-in-all, the debate was a disaster. Trump proved once again that he is not the champion of the multitude, but the elite few. Biden, the actual champion of the multitude, showed excellent composure and was impervious to Trump’s gibberish. The chaos in both the country and the might be a premonition of unprecedented division between right and left-wing ideologies to come, which the candidates should address in the upcoming debates, if they strive for unity at all.