The national audience had the opportunity on Sunday night to again watch republican nominee Donald Trump and democrat nominee Hillary Clinton take brutal shots at each other for 90, agonizingly long minutes.

As expected, the debate was disruptive and disappointing. Yet, I consider it vital to keep watching.

The general election is less than a month away, and it’s now crunch time for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to repair their flawed reputations—especially with me.

I remain distraught about Donald Trump’s temperament and Hillary Clinton’s lies. Sunday’s debate frustrated me rather than informed me.

Sunday night’s debate at Washington University in St. Louis desperately needed to be a win for Donald Trump and his campaign.

The Internet exploded after a video was leaked last week of Trump back in 2005 speaking in vulgar terms about relations with women. Women, a group Trump was already failing with, are again effected by the ill-mannered comments Mr. Trump can make.

The disheartening video was certain to be brought up at the debate by the obviously biased moderators Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper. Although this video truly bothered me, it wasn’t enough for me to automatically declare crooked Hillary the debate winner before it had even begun.

Trump dug himself a hole that makes me skeptical of his chances of winning. He needed the opportunity to win back some of trust of his supporters but the liberal moderators were going to do everything they could to make sure that couldn’t happen.

The Drudge Report perhaps reported the best headline after the debate: “TONIGHT: TRUMP VS. WORLD.” Trump took shots from everybody and did his best to play defense. The right and left media contradict whether or not the attacks were fair.

Raddatz and Cooper posed the questions that were merited towards Trump, I’ll freely admit that. The town-hall style debate flowed as expected like an ambush.  The moderator’s blatantly obvious “I’m with her” signs on their backs showed they planned on cutting Clinton a break.

The candidates took turns carefully listening to the questions that they were asked, but they were both guilty of evading to give a precise answer.  Raddatz was especially irritated when Trump swayed outward in his responses.

Raddatz at one point asks Trump: “Mr. Trump, let me repeat the question. If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in air strikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.”

I closely follow Dan Gainor from Fox News because I’ve appeared on CSPAN with him, and I was glad to see he weighed in on Raddatz’s interruptions.

Gainor reported after the debate, “There were six separate Raddatz interruptions in that question, including her actually arguing with Trump.”

While I understand a periodic intervention from the moderator, I can’t see how this debate could be considered between Trump and Clinton alone.

I’ll admit those questions needed to be asked, as I’ve been left wondering about the disconnection between Trump and Pence at times. However, I found Raddatz immensely irritating too frequently throughout the debate.

Newt Gingrich even weighed in on Raddatz’s composure on Twitter saying, “Why is Raddatz debating Trump? Isn’t that Hillary’s job?”

I was pleased with the questions asked from the undecided voters chosen from Gallup. I found the voters’ questions to be warranted as they addressed the very questions I had myself.  Mike McCurry, Presidential debates co-chair and former press secretary under President Bill Clinton, weighed in on the questions asked.

“Real citizens get to ask some of these questions and they asked some great ones.  That question at the end about, you know, ‘what do you see in the other person that you would compliment them on?’  That brought a cheer to everyone both in the media center and in the hall and probably across America too,” McCurry told the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.

McCurry also weighed on in the use of social media within the town-hall style debate. I found the presence of social media in the debate to be especially important when discussing what people really care about.

“We worked with Facebook, we worked with some of the other social media companies to really just go through what is the conversation happening on the internet, what are people tweeting about on Twitter.  What do they really want to see discussed” said McCurry.

This debate did have a surprisingly positive moment, and I applaud the decision of a town hall format where social media presence and undecided voters were especially important. I look forward to writing about the final showdown between Trump and Clinton at the last presidential debate.

Liz Kacher is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]