The first debate of this fall's U.S. presidential election achieved the rare feat of uniting the pundits in a notoriously divided country.
They found near unity in their dismay.
The point of agreement was that this was a sad spectacle for what's sometimes described as the world's oldest democracy.
The 90-minute affair concluded with a surreal exchange about whether the United States is in fact about to have a clean election.
In this debate, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, complained about mailed ballots and said: "It's a rigged election."
Several minutes earlier, the moderator had asked him to condemn white supremacists and militia-like groups, and the president pushed back.
