Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Tuesday branded President Donald Trump a liar and told him to “shut up” as the pair clashed in a bad-tempered start to their first televised debate.
Trump fired back hard at Biden, telling him: “There’s nothing smart about you, Joe. Forty-seven years, you’ve done nothing.”
Tension was palpable from the opening minutes, with the pair interrupting each other repeatedly, leading Biden to lash out at one point: “Will you shut up, man!”
“The fact is that everything he is saying so far is simply a lie. I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar,” Biden said.
The debate, watched by a deeply divided nation, comes 35 days ahead of the tensest US election in recent memory.
AFP