Welcome to debate night in America. This special edition of the beat. We'll take you

through everything you need to know as we ramp up. I'm Ari Melber and we'll show you

this live shot of the scene outside the debate hall where Joe Biden and Donald

Trump are facing off.

This is the earliest general election debate in American history.

And that's not all.

Alex Wagner is there and will be joining us in just a moment.

See you soon, Alex.

The Biden campaign pushed to jumpstart interests

in the race by making this debate earlier.

We could tell you tonight, a huge 73% of voters

say they are planning to watch tonight and you can too.

Nicole just mentioned this debate airs right here on MS NBC in about three hours

with Rachel Maddo leading the special coverage in under an hour.

I can also tell you this is the first debate between a president and a former president.

Kind of an interesting factoid there.

It's also the first time these two have been near each

other at all since their last debate. Remember, Donald Trump broke tradition. He skipped

the swearing in of President Biden after Donald Trump had failed to overthrow his own loss.

This is also the first time either candidate has debated in any forum in four years.

Neither did any primary debates this cycle.

So there are a lot of ways that this is even higher stakes than it would already be.

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