Atlanta, Georgia - It takes a lot for a US presidential debate to qualify as "the worst ever." But Thursday's car crash event featuring Donald Trump and President Joe Biden somehow managed to plumb new depths.

If there's one positive note to strike after a disaster night of television – and there really isn't – it's that it showed something approaching consensus is still possible in 2024 America.

The only problem is that the broad agreement is mostly on how terrible the two candidates are.

Biden, of course, is taking most of the flak for a performance that has the entire Democratic Party scrambling to consider its options for the rapidly approaching election.

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But an unusually composed Trump still racked up 90-minutes worth of damaging falsehoods that can't be glossed over just because they've become as unremarkable as Muzak in an elevator.

All in all, it was a night of low points, five of which stood out in particular.

Given the world-shattering scale and implications of Israel's war on Gaza – conducted with full US military and diplomatic backing – the entire subject got short shrift in the debate.

Asked what "additional leverage" he would use to get Israel and Hamas to end the war, Biden falsely said that only party refusing to accept a ceasefire proposal he put forward was the Palestinian group – something that Trump immediately pounced on, correctly pointing out that Israel has categorically refused to end its assault until Hamas has been completely wiped out.

Trump then insisted Israel should be allowed to "finish the job," before saying Biden had "become like a Palestinian."

As protesters demonstrated in front of CNN's Atlanta studio in solidarity with Gaza, where over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, the exchange highlighted the grim choices available to those opposed to the mass slaughter.

A moment that will surely be replayed over and over again in a thousand Trump campaign ads came early in the debate, when Biden dug himself into a hole and kept digging with a rambling answer that ended at rock bottom.

Asked about his economic record as president, the 81-year-old delivered a confusing stream-of-consciousness: "We be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, with the Covid, excuse me, dealing with everything we have to do with... We finally beat Medicare."

That last line was again picked up by Trump, who sarcastically quipped: "He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death and he's destroying Medicare"

Accusing Biden of "destroying Medicare" might be generously described as debatable or even misleading. Other claims made by Trump and left completely unchallenged were straightforward lies.

The most egregious one was predictably on the issue of abortion, with the 78-year-old accusing Democrats of taking "the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth" – a grotesque myth that has no relation to reality. Trump also bizarrely insisted that "everybody without exception" supported the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

There were other outright falsehoods, such as the innocence of convicted January 6 rioters and the Trump presidency having the "best environmental numbers ever."

To all this, debate moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper responded with a polite "thank you" before moving on to the next issue.

Given the relative continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations when it comes to immigration policy, it should come as no surprise that the two candidates only disagreed on the reason why the crackdown at the southern US border isn't more severe than it already is.

Trump repeatedly – and falsely – accused undocumented migrants of "killing our citizens at a level we’ve never seen before." Luckily for him, Biden himself brought up the subject unprompted and apropos of nothing, while discussing abortion access.

The Democrat's overall approach was to tout his own Trump-style asylum ban and complain that an even more draconian border security deal was shot down by Republicans last year.

Again, migrants both documented and undocumented were presented only as "illegals," threats to national security and used as a cudgel to beat an opponent over the head with.

On a more basic level, the format of this debate ended up contributing to the dismal impression.

CNN had locked out all other presidential candidates through setting qualification requirements absurdly high, including meeting a threshold of 15% in at least four approved national polls and gaining ballot access in states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral college votes.

It was a measure transparently meant to guarantee a Trump v. Biden affair. Given how poorly it went, the presence of the Green Party's Dr. Jill Stein, the Party for Socialism and Liberation's Claudia De la Cruz, and even Independent Robert F. Kennedy might have blunted the depressing conclusion that this is the best US politics has to offer.