Romney calls first Trump-Biden debate ‘an embarrassment’

Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, said the first debate between President Trump and Vice President Joe Biden, which was full of interruptions, personal insults and crosstalk, was “an embarrassment.”

“I thought it was an embarrassment last night, the debate,” Romney told reporters as he walked into the weekly Senate Republican luncheon.

Other Senate Republicans described the debate as “raucous,” “raw,” “rough,” “feisty” and, in the words of Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a “shitshow,” echoing the description CNN reporter Dana Bash used on air after the debate.

Even some of Trump’s staunchest supporters thought the debate got out of hand.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Trump’s performance was “a little too forceful” and advised that he “restrain himself a little” at the next debate.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is in a tough reelection race, hesitated a moment when asked about his reaction to the messy debate, where any policy discussion took a backseat to personal jabs that at times became so entangled as the candidates spoke over each other that it was difficult to follow who was saying what.

“Uhh, it wasn’t a Lincoln-Douglas debate,” Tillis said, referring to the famous series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen Douglas during the 1858 midterm election, which for centuries set the standard for great political debate.

Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) said he thought the event “was pretty raw” while Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said it was “raucous.”

Asked if he was proud of Trump’s performance, Cramer, a strong Trump ally, responded, “Proud isn’t a word I use very much.”