This is CNN breaking news.

Welcome to the lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

We begin with the 2020 lead right now.

Fallout from the debate that Joe Biden called a quote national embarrassment and

Republican Senator Ben Sass called a shit show this afternoon

oblivious to the criticism President Trump moments ago said that he thought the debate went great.

That is not the view of Republican senators who today called on President Trump to clean up remarks

from the debate in which the president not only declined to explicitly condemn white

supremacists, he offered encouragement to the proud boys, a violent far-right neo-fascist

group.

Given a second chance this afternoon, however, the President again declined to denounce the support of white supremacist supporters

and again declined to explicitly denounce white supremacy.

As far as the president would go was to claim he's always denounced, quote,

any form of any of that.

Mr. President, when you follow up, white supremacist,

and clearly love you and support you.

You welcome it.

I want law and order to be a very important part.

It's a very important part of my campaign.

And when I say that, what I'm talking about is law enforcement has to police have to take here

And they should stop defunding the police like they've done in New York

Like they've done in New York like they've done in New York. I just told you

...