Washington post lives onestop shop for news and analysis from last nights president ial debate and what a debate it was. This morning to kick things off, im joined by veteran political report reporter dan bulls. Im going to read the opening paragraph in todays paper where you no one alive has seen a president ial debate like tuesdays night shout fest between President Trump and former Vice President biden. 90 minutes of interruptions and insults. It was an insult to the public as well and a sad example of the state of american democracy five weeks before the election. Go on. Well, i think we know what happened last night. The president of the United States decided to come here and try to destroy the format of the debate that he agreed to the terms of and he set the tone for this debate. It was not that surprising other than the fact it was farther over the top than one might have expected. Vice President Biden came to expect a traditional debate. I think he knew he was in for a night in which the president was going to be hectoring, but probably not to the extent he did. And he was grappling with it. He was more focused obviously than the president on the message he wanted to deliver. And Chris Wallace, the moderator last night, who i have a lot of respect for as an interviewer and moderator was not able to keep control because the president was not willing to be brought under control. And so you had 90 minutes of as i described it, just a terrible mess of a debate and one that reflects poorly on the presidency of the United States and to some extent our democracy. Dan, on the question of Chris Wallace. Was there any effective ethical way for Chris Wallace to rein President Trump under control. You hear a lot of people saying on twitter last night on television this morning, cut his mic or go to break or do all of these things. Was that even possible . I dont think so. Cutting the mic in a debate like that would have been nearly impossible because there was so much cross talk between the president and biden. So if anybody was trying to control the mics, they would have they would have been just zap, zap, zap, zap. That would have done a disservice to viewers. You would not have been able to hear much of anything. I dont know what a moderator can do in that situation. For these general election debates, the moderators try to generally stay out of it. The format is designed with six segments, two minutes for each candidate at the time of each segment and the candidates can mix it up and the moderator can sit back, follow up when necessary. But basically let typical candidates do it. What we saw last night. If you have one candidate in particular who is willing to simply, you know, bulldoze everything, theres not a lot you can do. He kept pleading with the president , pleading with the president , you know. At first in polite tones and later in total exasperation. I dont know what any moderator could have done. Lets pretend that this last night was a normal debate, as much as we can. And im going to ask you normal debate questions. And that is, for each candidate, what was their strongest moment and what was their weakest moment. Start with President Trump. I think for President Trump, the strongest moment was when he went after biden on some law and order issues. That was his most sustained at the same time about an issue that he thinks will be valuable to him in trying to bring the election in his direction which hes not been able to do. I think his worse moment, obviously, was at the end when we got into the discussion of the ballots, mailin voting, white supremacy, proud boys. That was a low moment even for a president who is known for going low in moments like that. I think bidens strongest was when he was speaking to the camera, to the voters, when he was turning away from the president and to some extent from the moderator to make a direct pitch to basically say you know what this president is like. You know you cant trust him. You know he doesnt know what hes talking about. Heres what you should be thinking about as you vote. I thought those were moments when and clearly that was part of the debate prep, you could see he knew that that was the way to try to elevate out of what was, you know, an otherwise kind of a message of a debate. I thought his weakest moments were frankly when he kind of lost his own temper. You can understand why somebody in his situation would finally just kind of say, you know, will you shut up,man, as he did. But i dont know in the great scheme of things that was necessarily that great. You cant measure this debate in a symmetrical way. We know where the responsibility lies for how this debate unfolded. One of the things ive also seen people say both on twitter and also on television this morning, raising the question, should joe biden even show up at the next at the next two debates because last night was such a spectacle, what did jake tapper call it last night, a hot mess inside of a Dumpster Fire inside of a train wreck. And dana bash went further in words we shouldnt use here. Yes. That is correct. It was vivid, lets just say that. It was vivid. Do you think that the next two debates should go on . Well, i think that really is up to the candidates. I cant imagine what the next two debates would be like given what happened last night. The Biden Campaign apparently said last night that he will show up for the next two debates as he had promised to do before this debate happened. But as youre right, there are a lot of people, including any number of democrats, who think he ought not to do that. I think well have to wait and see what the president cease reaction is, about whether these next debates go forward. Theyre on the books. They are tradition. But after what happened last night, i think everybody will approach this with a lot of trepidation. If i remember correctly, the next debate is supposed to be a Town Hall Forum style. So there will be, you know, citizens asking the candidates questions. Do you think that last nights performance will play in a town hall format . No, absolutely not. All candidates ahead of those town hall debates are prepped to be even more respectful than they might otherwise be to avoid some of the contentious exchanges that might occur in a debate simply with a single moderator. They are told that this is this is something that can turn people off. So, for President Trump, especially, this holds potentially great peril. But he obviously doesnt worry about that, jonathan. I think, again, were trying to judge him by the tradition of the way candidates approach these debates. You have to wonder whats in his head about what he thinks about this. The idea that he could say the things that he said all threw the debate, particularly at the end about the proud boys and have any hope theyre going to be able to win over female voters in the suburbs is folly. I think that the president areas team is going to have to think about, okay, what are we hoping to get out of these debates if in fact these debates go forward. Dan, hopefully youll come back after the next after the next debate and we can talk about whether that was a hot mess inside a Dumpster Fire inside a train wreck. Dan, we got to go. Thank you so much for coming on first look this morning. Thank you, jonathan. Lets go over to the opinion side of the Washington Post where youll find my colleagues, ruth marcus and contributing columnist hugh hewitt. Thank you very much for being here. Welcome. Good morning. Good to be here. I have a feeling i know what youre going to say, so im going to start with you. Who do you think won last nights debate . Was there even a winner . Amy Coney Barrett won last nights debate because joe biden said nice things about her and refused to answer about packing the court. I did four hours of debate last night, 86 callers, half thought trump won, half thought biden won, everybody thought Chris Wallace lost. I have sympathy for chris. Ive been in that position. If this doesnt kill the president ial debate commission, nothing will. They need to have people who will not interject. They have to just let them go at each other and not try and direct it because it really hurt Chris Wallaces standing with the public. Hugh, let me continue with you on that line of on this question about the debates. Would it be better to as the question i asked dan, should the moderator have had the ability or the commission to either cut the mics or go to break to sort of have a reset, or is that not even possible . Should there even be rules for debates. That helped us with the cnn debates when you had bing, bing, bing, that audible thing. But the only solution is for you, jonathan, and me to moderate and ask our opponents questions or for ruth and i to moderate and cross talk because the audience came away i dont know if you two agree with it, came away with the president that the president was debating two people, not one. Go ahead, ruth. Have at it. I think Chris Wallace in the past has done as good a job as any interviewer of holding the president to account and following up with questions to him. But i think even Chris Wallace could not contain the raging beast that was President Trump last night. And i think the notion that he failed by being and it was a it was not his failure, it was just a failure of the format in the context of dealing with trump. But the notion that his problem was that he was too interjectionist and too assertive in trying to regain control of the debate format is just with all due respect to my friend, hugh, 100 , 180 degrees opposite from reality. We needed to figure out a way, if it was possible, and it was difficult to do, to do more to get the president to follow the rules that he had agreed to use. Maybe the next debate moderator needs to be a pre school teacher. Im going to stick with you and ask you the question i asked dan, the strongest moment and weakest moment for the president. I did think some of the strongest moments for the president was when he put some difficult questions or the moderator who you thought did too much, put some difficult questions to Vice President biden that he didnt answer. So the president s strongest moments were pressing the Vice President on law and order saying what Law Enforcement groups backed you . Pressing him on being clear about whether he would pack the court. Pressing him on what his position is exactly on the green new deal. But i have to say, and i i would just incorporate absolutely everything that dan said. Those moments for him were just so few and far between. The really outrageous moments, i have a list here, particularly one thing respecting the Election Results. The proud boys, stand by, but one thing i think dan didnt mention was the grotesque assault on beau biden by saying i didnt know beau biden and shifting to the attack on hunter biden. It was beneath even donald trump. Hugh . Strongest moments are the same. Unfortunately, Chris Wallace through a lifeline to the Vice President when he could not come up with a Law Enforcement agency. That should have been allowed to go its course. The president asked a question, the Vice President has no answer because he has no support in Law Enforcement, it would have been telling Chris Wallace cut it off. The strongest point for the Vice President was talking about beau biden, his weakest point was serial denials of hunter biden. But the weakest point for the president is he stepped on his own lines repeatedly. He will not stay on one subject long enough to follow through. On the lockdown, he scored significantly because theres a huge divide in america about how to proceed with the virus. But the most important moment of the debate, i dont know if ruth agrees with me, the Vice President is obliged to answer if he will stack the Supreme Court. Thats a republicthreatening move, thats a destabilizing, undermining of the rule of law, Kamala Harris dodged it twice after the debate, the Vice President said i wont answer because its controversial. If i were the moderator i would just say stay on that until i got a question answered. The American People deserve to know if the republic is going to be undermined by the next democratic president. What was republic threatening was the president of the United States, one, telling the proud boys to stand by and stand back, and casting doubt on what the Election Results could be on election night. Im just going to put that out there. Another question, one thing that came to mind, the children. President trump spent a lot of time going after hunter biden. Joe biden didnt return the favor and go after trumps own children who, according to published reports, are doing a whole lot of things that are lets just say questionable. Should joe biden have gone after the trump children . No, i dont think getting in the muck with President Trump gets you anything except for being mucky. I do think that hugh deserves an answer to the question that he posed. I think the question of how you think about the future of the court and whether you would expand the size of the court in the wake of what i consider to be the stealing, the theft of two Supreme Court seats is a legitimate question and its a legitimate question for Vice President biden to be pressed on and i completely understand why he doesnt want to give an answer. Thats the normal give and take. I do think that and i want to sort of go back and disagree with something that dan said and it goes to the question of whether Vice President biden should have gotten in the muck and gone after the president s children the way the president went after his children and in particular hunter biden. I think that under normal circumstances having a nominee call the sitting president of the United States a clown and telling him to shut up would be just alarming and breathtaking and a very big mistake. I think under these circumstances, it was warranted and i think that people were looking for some energy and some pushback and some fierceness from the Vice President and i was in the context im not normally in favor of incivility, but in the context i thought it was appropriate and justified to push back in that way. Just to go back for one second, i think one question is, where do we come out in this debate . Whats the outcome . And going into the debate, President Trump was on his heels. The trajectory of this election is not going well for him, the dynamic of this election is not going well for him. He did not do anything to change that dynamic last night. If his hope was that he would press the Vice President into making a terrible mistake and having some gaffes, he had a few, but he doesnt fundamentally rattle the Vice President. On the other hand if people were looking at this debate and hoping that the Vice President would be able to just put it away so we could all get some sleep in the next several weeks, were not going to get some sleep either. Can i one second. I want you in say what youre going to say. But in your response, just i want you to follow up on something that ruth said about Vice President biden and his, you know, calling the president a clown and telling him to shut up and saying, youre a racist. And a lot of democrats who looked at that and thought, yes, theres some fight. They want their candidate to fight back. Of the callers to your program this morning who said they thought joe biden won the debate, was that one of the reasons why they thought he won the debate . No, they thought he won the debate because the president lost it. And polite people hated the debate. You are polite. Ruth is polite, i am polite. We hated that debate. Polite people hate that. My 30,000 feet disagreement with dan balz is, the debate reflected the country. Were all going to go to lunch and chuckle at each other, the country is deeply divided. Social media reflects that. The debate last night reflected it. Theres no getting around it that we are at a turning point for whether or not were going to go towards freedom or towards socialism. And i dont mean that as a pejorative about socialism. I mean the european model, the aoc model, the Kamala Harris model, or back towards the reagan model. Donald trump is an imperfect messenger of freedom. But i thought it reflected 100 conversations with old friends. They dont stay civil because the country is talking about deeply rooted First Principles and its going to get hot. Can i just jump in and so vehemently disagree with hugh on the choice facing the country. Its not between freedom and socialism. Its between freedom and the destruction of democracy, a president who cannot condemn cannot condemn white supreme ac cannot pledge to respect the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transition of power and this attempt to conjure and transform joe biden a moderate democrat into some kind of socialist, aoc, boogeyman is just maybe its all that republicans have to argue, but its simply inaccurate and as he said last night, and of course everyone changes over time and the Democratic Party i will acknowledge has shifted towards the left. But joe biden is who joe biden is. Hes not aoc and attempts to paint them that way are not going to succeed as attempts to paint him as senile. And i think we saw that last night. At Vice President biden said at the debate when challenged that hes afraid of the progressives and hell be a puppet of the progressives, he said, i am the Democratic Party right now. And to ruths point, hugh, joe biden is nowhere near being a farleft socialist candidate. He beat folks in the race against him who were part of the wing of the Democratic Party. Why even go down that thats the benefit of being truth. What you and ruth will not deal with is if someone will not reject Court Packing, if someone will not reject the abolition of the legislative filibuster, theyre setting up the country for what was in essence the last 70 years of the roman republic, increasing destruction of tbut with fundamental premises about how we governor. When we say hes not aoc and not bernie sanders, i say youre wrong. Youre denying the reality of what Court Packing means and i think Court Packing is going to be the number one issue for the republicans other than the lockdown which some people out there in america were saying, lock down, my kids have to go to school and joe biden wants to lock us down. But to me, a constitutional law professor and to you opinion writers, its this Court Packing issue and hes as radical as anyone else because he will not denounce it. Disagreeing about the size of the court does not and disagrees about the legislative filibuster which is not in the constitution and neither is the size of the court does not turn you into an anticonstitutional socialist. I would love to have conversations about the size of the court and the role of the court. I doubt thats going to be the driving issue for folks out there who are worried about the ability to have their kids return to school or worried about their jobs or getting their jobs back who are worried frankly about what they saw on their Television Screens last night. I dont think theres a lot of mom and pops sitting around the table this morning talking about the size of the Supreme Court. Go ahead, hugh. I was going to say. Disagree to that. I talked to them this morning. And people worried about joe biden dodging that issue because they know what it means. Go ahead, john. I wanted to stick on the Supreme Court. We have a little bit of time left and, hugh, i know you have to go in about four minutes. But lets talk the Supreme Court nominee justice amy Coney Barrett. She was on capitol hill yesterday you just said justice nominee. Ive been saying justice. I just want to be clear. Im not putting her in the job before she actually gets it. Can we talk about what hugh, you called it destruction of the republic to pack the court. The president has stolen two seats on the Supreme Court. What will it say about the court and the independence of the judiciary if when amy Coney Barrett is confirmed as a third justice to the Supreme Court by President Trump. Ruth, you start. Well, for me and hugh is going to bristle at the notion that these court seats were stolen. Im going to double down on what you said there. And i think that the president if youre going to talk about threats to the court like Court Packing, im not sure under these circumstances i would call a threat to the court, talk about threats to the court by a president who talks about the importance of having a justice on the court who is going to vote his way in an election in a he seems determined to dispute if he loses it as seems likely. Thats an assault of the integrity of the court as serious as the expanding the size of the court. Theyre one and the same. I would like everybody to go and get ruths book supreme ambition. The first half of ruths book is about the 30year battle for the Supreme Court. Every side has taken every advantage they could for 30 years. No side has proposed we lost that particular round, lets blow up the court. I am convinced that if we change the number of the Supreme Court, it will unleash the hounds and it will change again and again and again. And thats what i mean by undermining the rule of law. And i think ruths book perfectly summarizes how invested america is in the stability in the court and it must remain so invested and to politicize it as joe biden and Kamala Harris is doing, is so deeply irresponsible, it makes Donald Trumps rhetoric appear as a footnote in the history of america. I was going to give hugh the last word, but ruth, go right ahead. The hounds were unleashed when Merrick Garland did not get even a hearing many, many months before the election and inauguration of a new president. The hounds were unleashed when as people were voting, when a justice died, the president having backed and Mitch Mcconnell having backed denying the incumbent president the ability to fill the scalia seat is rushing through the appointment of and, yes, shes going to be justice barrett. A justice whose thank you for plugging the book. This is commenting the takeover for decades to come. The hounds are out and the way democrats respond to the loss theft of those two seats, i have a hard time and ive written this and it was hard me me to say it. I have a hard time arguing against finding some temporary way to remedy that outcome through what may be a temporary expansion of the size of the court coupled with other institutional changes. This is not one side comes to this with clean hands. Theres theft on the part of the Republican Party of these Supreme Court seats. And, hugh, out of respect for your time, we got to go. Were out of time. Thanks so much for coming on Washington Post live and the first 2021 president ial debate, im going to put that in air quotes. Thank you so much for coming on. We would like to do this all day long. Im not letting it happen. See you guys. And thank you for watching. Well be back at 11 00 a. M. Eastern today with a special program on the Digital Divide featuring congresswomen Cathy Mcmorris rodgers. And at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, joining us in a series on the election were calling voting matters. Our guests will be the secretaries of state from colorado and washington about their efforts to turn out the vote in november. Once again, youre watching washington poegs live. Have a good day. Trump telling us not to worry, that the virus will, quote, disappear. That a, quote, miracle is coming. Joe biden saying we need a plan. A national strategy. A president who is willing to lead. Willing to be a role model for our nation. While joe biden said at their National Convention that no miracle is coming. We actually think we might just be a short time away from when america will produce the first safe and effective Coronavirus Vaccine and we will begin to deliver it to the American People the moment its approved. Watch the Vice President ial debate between Vice President mike pence and senator Kamala Harris live wednesday, october 7th, at 9 00 p. M. Eastern from the university of utah in Salt Lake City and the second president ial debate town hall with President Trump and former Vice President joe biden taking audience questions. Live from the center of the performing arts in miami thursday, october 15th. Watch the debates live on cspan. Stream live or watch recent and older debates on demand at cspan. Org debates or listen live on the cspan radio app. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight a look back at the 1969 Supreme Court case tinker versus des moines which decided that students do not lose their First Amendment rights on school grounds. The court ruled in favor of three des moines, iowa, students who were suspended for wearing black arm bands to school to protest the vietnam war violating local school policies. Watch tonight, beginning at 8 00 eastern, enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Youre watching cspan3. Your unfiltered view of government. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Now the vermont gubernatorial candidates, incumbent republican government phil scott debated his challenger. It was sponsored by Vermont Public Television and vermont public radio. Youll hear from candidates from Lieutenant Governor and u. S. House but today were joined by t