Well, I'm glad Trump didn't self destruct last night.
Even if I can't muster up the motivation to vote for him I certainly don't want Hillary to be President.
I had read in a blog warnings about Hillary doing a "broken wing" act heading into the debate so that all she had to do was look alive, coherent and able to stand on her own in order to get a "win" out of the debate.
Then of course in order for Trump to score a win all he had to do was exercise enough self control over his mouth to not make more trouble for himself, comforting those on the fence that he isn't always out of control like a WWF wrestler.
So we have the decrepit, corrupt war mongering globalist vs the nationalist crony capitalist carnival barker.
Yeah, he needs to be given credit for this being his first presidential debate at this level, and also for the bias imbalance. I think Holt did the "fact check" thing to Trump at least four times, and that was for "Trump issues", like the birther thing, that Holt himself brought up.
AFAIK, Holt did not fact check Clinton a single time, nor did he hit her with the classified data issue, where we have plenty of evidence, including from Comey, that she lied, and nothing about Benghazi and the video. Not to mention any of the other obvious targets.
While Trump came off as on the defensive, there was a reason for most of that. As I mentioned in my post above, I think the only time he came off as overly defensive was on his Iraq war position, which he should have just waved off. I'm sure he and his team will correct that in the next debate, and I suspect he's a fast learner, so the tables may turn.