CLEVELAND, Ohio-As hundreds of Black Lives Matter activists protested near the debate Tuesday night in Cleveland between President Donald Trump, a Republican, and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the president drew controversial attention for his combative nature during the chaotic debate and for refusing to denounce White supremacy during a time of heightened racial unrest in the country.

In turn, the Proud Boys, a far-right White extremist group, pledged allegiance to the president Tuesday night  on social media, after he told the group to "stand back and stand by" during the debate, a comment that has outraged the Black community and Civil Rights organizations.

Biden denounced White supremacy and institutional racism, and was no pushover, and was combative too, both of the presidential candidates calling each other names and interrupting each other, and outright ignoring debate moderator Chris Wallace's continual demands for decorum.

Wallace blamed the president for most of the interruptions.

“I think the country would be better served if we let both people speak without interrupting,”  said Wallace, an anchor for Fox News.

Debate topics, which were overshadowed by the interruptions, ranged from Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to the environment, climate change, racial unrest, COVID-19, and the economy.

The candidates traded insults throughout the night and it got down and dirty as Trump called Biden's son Hunter Biden a cocaine user and questioned Hunter's prior position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company where he was paid some $3 million, Senate Republicans releasing a report on Hunter Biden and the Ukraine issue just days before Tuesday's debate.

"Yes, he had a drug problem but its been fixed," said Biden of his son Hunter, whom he said he is proud of.

Biden was obviously annoyed with the president's constant interruptions and at one point said "would you shut up man."

He called the president a liar and said that Trump has wrecked the country relative to his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken more than 200,000 lives since it broke in America in early march.

Trump argued that he prudently shut down the border from China where he claims the deadly virus originated and said that the country is rebounding under his leadership, though he trails in double digits and is losing in most of the swing states, the candidates neck and neck in the pivotal state of Ohio as the Nov 3 presidential election nears.

If Biden had his choice, said Trump, he would simply "close down the country."

President Trump took on Biden's record as a prior U.S. senator and former vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, and Biden criticized the Trump record since the president took office in 2017 for a four-year term.

The president said the 1994 Crime Bill, which hurts Blacks, was orchestrated under Biden when he was a longtime U.S. senator.

Interruptions and name calling aside, the debate was somewhat entertaining, sources said, a deterrence from the usually boring debates that plague presidential elections.

The pre-debate protests held Tuesday in Cleveland, essentially two of them, including the Black Lives Matters rally, were peaceful as SWAT teams and the Armed National Guard stood by to purportedly protect the city, an anxious largely Black city of some 385,000 people that has its on excessive force problems and is under a consent decree for police reforms, and a city where activists rioted in May behind the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

The 90 minute debate, void of commercials, was broadcasted across every major news station and cable channel.

Cleveland Clinic, just named the second best hospital in the world in U.S. News rankings, co-hosted the event along with Case Western Reserve University, a private and prominent research university created in 1967.

It was first of three debates scheduled before the November election and sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana had originally agreed to be the host but pulled out amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Both Biden and Trump received a limited number of tickets for invited guests and the general public was shutout of the debate due to the coronavirus pandemic

Ohio has reported 152,000 confirmed cases and some 4,746 deaths, and worldwide there are some 30 million confirmed cases, and roughly a million deaths.