President Donald Trump's performance at the first 2020 presidential debate has shocked observers across the world who are lamenting the decline and fall of the United States of America as a world power.
As the Washington Post reports, even right-wing publications such as Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper thought Trump's performance was symbolic of something deeply wrong with American society.
"Whoever is looking for an explanation for the shape the United States is currently in will find it in those 90 minutes, that should have been a political debate," the publication wrote on Wednesday. "Instead, the tradition has degenerated into cheap reality TV. What flickered across TV screens was the image of a country in chaos. The spiteful debate mirrors a country that is no longer even capable of having a dignified discussion."
Anna Soubry, a former Conservative Party lawmaker in the United Kingdom, called the debate "truly terrible."
"Whatever our views let’s agree and promise we will never allow British politics to plummet to such a level," she wrote on Twitter.
And French newspaper Le Monde warned that Trump's entire presidency is a warning to the rest of the world about how even traditionally stable democracies can degenerate into authoritarianism.
"Four years of Trumpism have largely contributed to weakening one of the greatest democracies in the world," an editorial in the paper declared. "It’s a lesson for everyone else."