Hi everyone it's 4 o'clock in New York a Catholic and a convict walk into a bar.

Not exactly, but you get the picture.

It's a picture that will be seen by millions of voters here and all around the world.

Tonight's debate, one part sacred American political tradition, the first and possibly only presidential debate, and the other two parts undignified first, thanks to one of the two participants being someone with so little respect for

our political traditions, the traditions of our very elections, that he sought to end

the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power by denying the irrefutable fact of his own defeat and inciting an insurrection.

It would be the first time a current president debates an ex-president.

It will also be the first time one of the participants is currently

awaiting sentencing for his criminal conviction. The substance or whether there is

much substance debated well that's an open question too at this hour. President Joe Biden, who is now

in Atlanta for tonight's debate. You can see him here greeting supporters just a few minutes

ago, faces a familiar debate opponent in Donald Trump.

Trump is a candidate who has a conspiracy theory for every

vulnerability he has as a political candidate.

Trump claims the 2020 election was rigged when really the American

people rejected him, sent him packing after four years. He claims that Joe Biden

tonight will be quote jacked up for the debate so that he can pre-but have potentially

rambling incoherent performance on his own part. He claims his criminal

conviction is the work of President Joe Biden and a weaponized

Department of Justice when it is actually the work of completely independent

prosecutors in New York and a jury of Trump's peers who came to the conclusion that he was guilty after looking at the facts and witnesses many of them Trump confidence.

But it is Trump's criminal conviction in and of itself that has so far reshaped the race more dramatically than any

...