HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY, N.Y. (CN) — The first presidential candidate debate of 2016 started out fiery and remained so throughout its entire 90 minutes, with Republican Donald Trump largely on his heels as Democrat Hillary Clinton hit him again and again on issues ranging from race relations and the economy to how to defeat the Islamic State group.
The debate, which was expected to draw nearly 100 million viewers from around the world, came exactly 56 years after the historic Nixon-Kennedy debates ushered presidential politics into the television age.
During the debate's early moments, which moderator NBC's Lester Holt steered to the economy, Trump did quite well, keeping his composure and his comments focused. But he quickly gave into his instinct for counter-punching, as Clinton went right after him, question after question.
By mutual agreement, Clinton answered Holt first, saying, "The central question of this election is what kind of country we want to be and what kind of future we want to build together.
"I want to invest in you," the former secretary of state said, adding later that she believes "the more we can do for the middle class, the more we can invest in the middle class, the better off we'll be."
She spoke of infrastructure investment, investment in small businesses and renewable energy, raising the national minimum wage and equal pay for women, profit sharing for employees, and doing more to support to people "trying to balance family and work."
Donald Trump opened by talking of "jobs fleeing the country," mostly, he said, because of bad trade deals.
"China," he said, "is using our currency as a piggy bank to rebuild their country."
In the meantime, he said, companies like Ford and Carrier are building plants in other countries.
"We have to do a much better job at keeping our job and offer companies better incentives to build and expand here," Trump said.
"We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us and stop our companies from leaving the United States. We cannot let it happen," he said.
Trump vowed to reduce taxes "tremendously" for small and big businesses alike "and that's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan. It's going to be a beautiful thing to watch."
Clinton called this proposal, "Trumped-up trickle-down economics."
That's when the gloves came off, and Trump never really recovered.
The two went on to trade blows over NAFTA, which Trump called a disaster, laying it at the feet of presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and by extension, his opponent.
"You have no plan," Trump said. "You are going to approve the largest tax increase in history and drive companies out."
"What I have proposed will be paid for will be raising taxes on the wealthy," Clinton said.
Needling Trump, Clinton undermined his self-made image by pointing out the $14 million he received from his father.
Trump painted a picture a dystopian United States wrecked almost exclusively, in his telling, by the Clintons.