#DonaldTrump #JoeBiden #Debate #Cleveland

Donald Trump and Joe Biden shouted over each other and insulted each other as moderator Chris Wallace lost control of the 'dumpster fire' that was the first Presidential debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tuesday's angry and chaotic presidential debate quickly devolved into an unconstrained mess – surpassing prior encounters in the force and severity of the attacks but also into the constant cross-talk and breakdown of orderly discussion.

Barely had the night begun when the two candidates began name calling and fighting, with Biden asking Trump to shut up and slapping him down as the president repeatedly interrupted his answers.

'Would you shut up, man?,' a visibly exasperated Biden said about 20 minutes into the debate after Trump interrupted him again as he tried to talk about the Supreme Court.

And, about 15 minutes later during a discussion on the COVID pandemic, he told Trump again: 'Would you just shush for a minute?'

When it was over CNN's Jake Tapper called it a 'hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck,' as well as a 'disgrace,' in one of many efforts by commentators to make sense of the carnage. His colleague Dana Bash called it a 's**tshow' - a verdict broadcast in full which rapidly went viral.

Biden spokeswoman Symone Sanders said it was 'just a lot of chaos from Donald Trump.'

Coming into a debate where his team acknowledged he skipped the typical policy cramming of such contests, Trump relentlessly went after Biden – frequently cutting him off mid-sentence.

Biden, determined not to get out-muscled and mindful of Trump's slashing 2016 attacks on Hillary Clinton, came armed with his own insults – branding Trump a 'liar' and a 'clown' and also 'a racist' – but sometimes merely sat back and smiled amid Trump's own charges.

During one exchange, Biden told the president to 'shut up.' Later he said 'you're the worst president that America has ever had.'

Trump, for his part, brought up Biden's son Hunter's past cocaine use and inaccurately accused him of getting a dishonorable discharge from the Navy. He called his rival a 'socialist,' and repeatedly tried to tar him with 'radical' elements like Antifa.

He tried to yoke Biden to a 'manifesto' of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and accused him of backing the Green New Deal on the environment. Biden said he backs the 'Biden plan.'

Nominal moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News repeatedly lectured Trump, telling him 'I'm the moderator of this debate' at one point. His efforts were mostly fruitless.

But he let the two candidates go at each other for long stretches, seemingly powerless to enforce rules negotiated for months by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential debates.

It was a departure from the one-on-one format where Wallace, who commands the TV stage on 'Fox News Sunday,' this summer cornered Trump with questions about his cognitive test and accepting the results of the election.

When the smoke cleared after 90 minutes of attacks and interruptions that left many viewers floored, it was not evident that Trump had accomplished the game-changing takedown of Biden's that his team was hoping for.