US 2020 election: The first Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate

It started out civilly enough, with President Donald Trump striding deliberately to his lectern, and Democrat Joe Biden nodding to his opponent and offering a "How you doing, man?"

Trump came out of the gate looking to challenge Biden and badgered him throughout the debate, drawing a string of rejoinders from the Democrat, including a plea to "just shush for a minute" at the half-hour mark.

At other points, the two candidates dialed down their rhetoric, only to resume their interruptions once again. When Trump was fielding a question about a report that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, Biden was the one interjecting: "Show us your taxes. Show us your taxes."

Roughly 50 minutes into the debate, moderator Chris Wallace's frustration came to a boil as he tried to regain control. "Gentlemen, I hate to raise my voice, but why should I be any different than the two of you?" Wallace said, drawing some muffled laughter from both sides of the otherwise mostly quiet room.

Trump blamed Biden, but Wallace firmly pushed back to the president, "Frankly, you've been doing more interrupting."

But was no discernible response when the former vice president called the sitting president a "clown" and told him to "keep yapping."

Biden told Trump to “get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap” and go in his golf cart to the Oval Office to come up with a bipartisan plan to save people.

Trump snarled a response, declaring that “I’ll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did. You don’t have it in your blood.”

“I know how to do the job,” was the solemn response from Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president.

Trump struggled to define his ideas for replacing the Affordable Care Act on health care in the debate’s early moments and defended his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, declaring that “I was not elected for three years, I’m elected for four years.”

Trump criticized Biden over the former vice president’s refusal to comment on whether he would try to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation if Barrett is confirmed to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As the conversation moved to race, Biden accused Trump of walking away from the American promise of equity for all and making a race-based appeal.

“This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division,” Biden said.

The contest between President Donald Trump and Vice-President Joe Biden was chaotic from start to finish.