Chris Wallace Struggled to Rein In an Unruly Trump at First Debate

On the eve of Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News declared his goal as the evening’s moderator: “My job is to be as invisible as possible.”

Quite.

With a pugilistic President Trump relentlessly interrupting his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Wallace struggled to keep the proceedings coherent, reduced at times to pleading with the president to pause and allow the Democratic presidential nominee to speak.

“Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate, and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer it,” Mr. Wallace, sounding more headmaster than moderator, instructed Mr. Trump early on. (Mr. Trump, the headstrong pupil, did not accede.)

Known for his sharp interrogations of political figures, Mr. Wallace — the veteran Fox News anchor who at 72 was the youngest of the three men onstage — succeeded in keeping Mr. Trump more or less in check during his first go-round as moderator four years ago, when pundits declared him a clear winner of the night.

On Tuesday, Mr. Wallace was facing harsher notices, as viewers assessed his performance on social media. “Moderate this debate — now,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, demanded on Twitter 15 minutes in.

Mr. Trump did not make it easy. In a brute-force style, the president flouted the agreed-upon ground rules and refused to allow Mr. Biden his two minutes to respond to questions, leaving Mr. Wallace yelping at one point, “Let him answer!”

Not satisfied with merely speaking over his Democratic opponent, Mr. Trump took aim at the moderator, too. “I guess I’m debating you, not him, but that’s OK, I’m not surprised,” Mr. Trump said after one Wallace query he disliked.

The debate had no breaks. But at the midway point, perhaps sensing that Mr. Trump was threatening to steamroller the event, Mr. Wallace did something unusual for a presidential moderator: He effectively called the debate to a temporary halt.

“The country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions,” Mr. Wallace said, directly asking Mr. Trump to yield a higher civic ideal. “I’m appealing to you, sir, to do it.”

“And him, too?” the president replied defiantly, nodding at Mr. Biden.

“Well, frankly, you’ve been doing more interrupting,” Mr. Wallace replied.

Few journalists envied the moderator his task heading into the night.

Mr. Trump’s onstage intensity and logorrhea have proved a formidable challenge for some of the nation’s leading interviewers. And with the president ignoring the traditional parameters of debate decorum, Mr. Wallace was left with few good options to keep Mr. Trump from chattering without pause.

He tried humor: “If you want to switch seats, we can do that,” Mr. Wallace told the president at one point, arching a brow. (Mr. Trump did not parry.) He said he regretted having to raise his voice, “but why should I be different than the two of you?”

On social media, some viewers at home called for the president’s microphone to be shut off, but that was a power Mr. Wallace did not possess: Neither campaign would have agreed beforehand to such a mechanism.

Which left the moderator, a lonely man on a large stage, having to try to cajole, joke, plead and argue to maintain order.

“If you are coming down hard on Chris Wallace, ask yourself: what could a moderator have done in the face of Trump’s behavior?” the veteran political strategist Jeff Greenfield asked on Twitter immediately afterward.

Lester Holt, who had Mr. Wallace’s role as leadoff moderator of the 2016 debates, gave a resigned response on the NBC News telecast after the debate ended. “If hearing that this debate is over was music to your ears, you may not be alone,” Mr. Holt told viewers, adding, “I’m at a bit of a loss for words.”

Mr. Wallace, son of the “60 Minutes” legend Mike Wallace, drew on the entirety of his on-screen repertoire: the defusing aside, a self-deprecating remark, a jabbing question. None seemed to knock Mr. Trump off his determination to dominate the night.

It was a far cry from Mr. Wallace’s stated goal for the debate. “I’m trying to get them to engage, to focus on the key issues, to give people at home a sense of ‘why I want to vote for one versus the other,’” he had said beforehand.

Instead, he closed the evening with Mr. Trump still talking offscreen, attempting to argue over Mr. Wallace’s signoff. “This is the end of this debate,” the Fox News anchor said, drawing a deep breath. “It’s been an interesting hour and a half.”

Two more matchups are scheduled between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, and the next moderator assigned to maintain control will be a TV personality known less for jousting with lawmakers than listening, quietly and attentively, to rambling on-air callers: Steve Scully of C-SPAN.

The message from Tuesday night: good luck.

John Koblin contributed reporting.