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🗳️ Moving the Market

"A shit show," "a disgrace," "a low point"

The first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was a national embarrassment, filled with taunts, interruptions, name calling and an overwhelming lack of substance. Chaos reigned, America suffered.

• NBC's Lester Holt said it marked "a low-point in American political discourse." His colleague Andrea Mitchell called it "a disgrace." CNN's Dana Bash described it, simply, as "a shit show."

Politically, little changed. Trump interrupted Biden relentlessly, lied about both of their records, and floated conspiracy theories while refusing to convincingly disavow a right-wing neofascist group. (The group, Proud Boys, celebrated the call-out.)

• Biden never landed a decisive, knock-out punch. He frequently resorted to personal attacks and called Trump a "clown" and "the worst president America has ever had." At one point, he said to Trump: "Will you shut up, man?"

• Chris Wallace, the moderator, proved incapable of tempering Trump's interruptions or keeping the two candidates focused on the issues at hand. As expected, he also refused to fact-check the president on a number of falsehoods.

The big picture: When the dust settles and the news cycle moves on, we believe three things will remain:

1. The Biden campaign will sell a lot of "Will you shut up, man?" t-shirts. Indeed, they've already started.

2. The mainstream media will repeatedly highlight the president's refusal to disavow right-wing extremism.

3. Pundits will debate the necessity of holding future debates given Trump's refusal to adhere to basic rules of civility.

Beyond that, we don't see how this debate moves the needle. As we wrote yesterday, Americans are far too entrenched in their respective political camps for anything but the most dramatic mistake to make a serious impression on the electorate.

• It will be days before we get adequate polling on the debates, but betting markets give Biden a net +6 advantage.

How it's playing:

• NBC News: "First debate descends into melee as Trump steamrolls debate rules, Biden fires back"

• NYTimes: "With Cross Talk, Lies and Mockery, Trump Tramples Decorum in Debate With Biden"

• WaPo: "Trump plunges debate into fiery squabbling"

• WSJ: "Trump, Biden Clash in Contentious First Debate"

Joe Biden | Bloomberg/Getty

🏛️ Big in the Beltway

Can Biden survive Facebook and Fox News?

In the hours before the debate, Fox News and right-wing Facebook accounts floated the baseless conspiracy that Joe Biden might wear an earpiece to receive help from off-stage advisers.

• The attack was comically familiar: In every presidential election cycle of this century, excluding 2012, at least one nominee (Gore, Bush, Obama, Clinton) has faced a similar accusation.

What was different this time was the velocity with which the conspiracy forced itself into the mainstream. Tracing its spread from Facebook to Fox News, as our colleague Ben Collins does here, highlights the perilous state of American political media and the challenge Biden faces in the weeks ahead.

Three takeaways:

1. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have never had more reach, and their aspirations toward political neutrality make them highly susceptible to coordinated misinformation efforts.

2. Fox News has never been so willing to shamelessly advance these conspiracies by giving them credence on air — both on the daytime news broadcasts and the prime time opinion side.

3. The President of the United States has never been so willing to embrace and trumpet those same conspiracies. His campaign pushed the earpiece conspiracy to its supporters via text message.

The big picture: The infrastructure of American political media today makes it extremely easy to take conspiracies mainstream, which means Biden will always be vulnerable to conspiracies that go viral on social media and are then legitimized by Fox News and Trump.

• The earpiece conspiracy is already a distant memory, but Biden's opponents have demonstrated that they have the power to drive the news cycle and derail the political discourse at a moment's notice.

📺 Something better? 📺

Our new colleague Shep Smith launches his CNBC show, "The News with Shepard Smith," tonight at 7 p.m. ET.

He is touting it as a non-partisan, straight-shooting, facts-first newscast, which would make it a rarity.

Bob Chapek | Gerardo Mora/Getty

🌴 Talk of Tinseltown

Disney lays off 28,000 employees

The Walt Disney Company is laying off 28,000 employees as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact its theme park business with park closures in California and limited capacities elsewhere, the latest of several setbacks for the Magic Kingdom in 2020.

• The cuts will affect roughly a quarter of the workers in Disney's resorts segment, including theme parks, cruise lines and retail. About two-thirds of those layoffs will affect part-time employees.

• "We simply cannot responsibly stay fully staffed while operating at such limited capacity," Josh D'Amaro, chairman of Disney's Parks, Experiences and Products division, said in a staff memo.

The big picture: The pandemic has dealt a massive blow to theme parks and the companies behind them. Disney, SeaWorld and NBCUniversal have all reported major revenue losses due to the pandemic and say the impact is likely to last for a long time.

NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News.

Market Links

• Alex Schultz is Facebook's new CMO (Bloomberg)

• Justin Smith launches Bloomberg Wealth (Axios)

• LeBron James strikes a Universal deal (Deadline)

• Bo Han tries to reinvent sports consumption (Axios)

• Roger Goodell faces his first Covid-19 test (ESPN)