First presidential debate
On Tuesday, September, 29th the United States of America was revving up their election engine to prepare to either elect their next president or keep the literal old one. A lot of things were said in the debate such as Trump telling a known white supremacist group to “Stand back and stand by” which I will go into further clarification later on. Presidential nominee, Joe Biden called Antifa an “ideal” which again I will also go into further detail later on in the text. Trump would also make remarks on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter who did happen to have a drug and alcohol addiction. Probably the most notable part of the debate was the fact that President Trump kept interrupting Joe Biden. Now it’s on to the details of the actual debate.
The location of the debate took place at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University which is in the state of Ohio. The moderator of the debate was Chris Wallace who happens to work for Fox News and is known for giving hard interviews. Topics that were discussed were the COVID-19 outbreak, the economy, race, the candidate’s records, the climate, and the integrity of the election. The reason these were the topics was because of their relevance in the United States at the moment.
Starting off with the coronavirus, something that is affecting the whole world right now. President Donald Trump had told the people that there was a vaccine and that it was ready. That’s false however because it would first have to be FDA approved, that’s certainly not the case right now. He did make comments that in order to not have COVID, you have to drink bleach. People actually did that, and when asked about these comments he said he was “kidding”. When asked about a plan Biden did propose his and went as far as to say that Trump doesn’t have one. This would also lead to Trump saying that covid cases are happening more as testing becomes more widely available. These aren’t the most controversial things said in this debate.
The next topic had to deal with race, as during the summer a lot of news coverage happened over the George Floyd killing which sparked protests and riots. When he was asked to denounce white supremacist groups, Donald Trump asked for a name to call them. Upon getting the name of the Proud Boys he said “Standback and standby”. For clarification, the Proud Boys were apart of a massacre in Charlottesville Virginia, and have had ties with the KKK. They are an all-male group who lean to the far right (Republican), in basic terms, these guys are racists. After learning of this the actual members of this organization were somehow happy over this. Back to the debate, once mentioning them, Trump went on to talk about Antifa.
These in basic terms are the exact opposite of the Proud Boys. This is a group of people who have been seen causing the violence and riots of BLM protests that were literally peaceful. There have been videos of actual Black Lives Matter protestors telling them to leave so things don’t get violent. Enough about race, the next topic has to deal with climate.
Lastly, Trump went on record to say that humans are the cause of pollution to an extent. This is news because he has always tried to portray himself as an environmentalist. Funny thing is, he literally got rid of the Obama Clean Power Plan which would help reduce pollution. He tried to justify it by saying that the prices were too high. Then Biden proposed the $2 Trillion Dollar Green Dollar Bill, where Trump called it the $100 trillion dollar bill. Of course, in order to actually get all the info, I recommend watching the debate.
The Vice Presidential Debate
On October 7th, the beginning of the U.S. presidential debates happened and it was between current U.S. president Mike Pence and Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris. They were tasked to show how they would tackle problems that are currently facing the United States at the moment. Some of these topics would be Covid-19, the Economy, and Climate change. From these people who are watching would vote on who gave more of an effective argument, or like who they decided they would vote for. Some people call these popularity contests, which is sort of is since it’s a poll on who the people mostly agree with.
There is also a third option, if a viewer does not choose the democratic or republican nominee then they can choose sort of an undecided vote, which means they’re not sure of who to pick, they won’t pick both of them, or they already know who they’re voting for. With that being said the next few paragraphs will go into some of the topics discussed and important facts that were thrown into the political argument.
Starting with the topic that hasn’t affected the U.S. but the whole world in general, Covid-19. It should be important to know the U.S. is not doing great at all when it comes to COVD cases, which is also a factor in this being a debate topic.
When this topic arose, Vice President Mike Pence decided to not focus on it and just spoke on his “confidence to the American people”. Democratic nominee, Kamala D. Harris mentioned how over 210k Americans have died and over 7 million people have the virus currently. She even went out of her way to call the Trump Administration’s response to COVID, “The greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country”. Again this isn’t just the only topic that was covered in this debate.
One of the other topics that were covered had to deal with the U.S. economy. Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris stated that she would repeal tax cuts to the rich, for some quick info, a tax cut is when a government reduces the amount of taxes someone has to pay. So she basically wants to stop the rich from having to pay a lesser amount of taxes. She also said she didn’t want to raise taxes on people who make less than 400k a year.
For some insight, the average American person made over 40k in a year in the year 2019 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Pence did go on the opposing and praised the trump taxes saying that they were there to help the American people. He also went to attack the Green Deal, defending fracking, and saying Biden want to bury the economy. To put it in the simplest terms, fracking is like sticking a needle in the earth to relieve pressure. Yet you are releasing chemicals that are very bad and help with rising pollution.
Starting with Climate Change, something that is also affecting everyone on the entire Earth. Vice President Mike Pence did state that he was proud of the U.S. and their conservation of the environment. He even went out of his way to comment on how clean the U.S. water is. Harris did talk about how Biden won’t ban fracking, but she did talk about reentering the Paris climate accord, something that the Trump Administration did pull out of. She also mentioned how Biden’s economic plan is supposed to create 7 million more jobs through clean energy, as opposed to Trump.
Lastly, another topic that was covered had to deal with racial justice, this means topics like the Breonna Taylor case, and black lives matter topics were discussed. California Senator, Kamala Harris showed her support for peaceful protesting and said how Breonna Taylor was not given justice. Pence said he and Trump stand with the Law Enforcement and that it was an “insult” to men and women who are apart of law enforcement to say systemic racism even exists.
He also said there was no excuse for what happened to George Floyd, but there is no excuse for rioting and looting. From there it got heated with Harris saying Trump is a racist and antisemitic, where Pence fired back with Trump’s Jewish grandchildren. These aren’t the only debates though, there will still be a few more with one of the presidential debates currently being canceled due to Trump testing positive for COVID-19.
The Final Presidential Debate
On October 22, the Final Presidential Debate had happened between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and current president Donald Trump. This debate also covered a lot of different as well as the same topics from the last debate. There was a small change, however, now the nominee’s will have their mic’s muted when their speaking time is up. That happened because, in the last debate, Donald Trump decided to interrupt the whole time.
This only resulted in chaos, which didn’t allow for a lot of progress.
The first topic will be COVID-19.
To start it off Biden called trump out for having “no comprehensive plan” as” we are going in a dark winter” which means that Biden called trump out for not being prepared as we enter the old months, which is when viruses tend to be at their best. Biden pledged widespread rapid testing if elected which will happen if he wins. Trump claimed “no one knew what this thing was” even though he himself knew the dangers of the virus from leaked audio footage. He also claims himself “immune” to covid after being tested positive for it after the first presidential debate. Biden also will increase contact tracing, and national standards/financial backing to maintain safety in opening schools up. This is what South Korea actually did in their fight in coronavirus which helped to fight their battle. So it’s fair to say that Biden actually has a plan to fight this deadly virus.
One of the other topics happened to be about Healthcare which is also a controversial topic among the U.S. Trump stood by his efforts to repeal Obamacare and said he wants to replace it with brand new beautiful Healthcare. No plan was mentioned, which he’s said that it’s been ready since he’s been, president. Trump attacked Biden claiming that he supports socialized medicine and taking away 180 million private insurance plans. Biden reaffirmed his support for a $15 federal minimum wage Noting that anything below it results in living below the poverty line. Another controversial topic was immigration.
It’s no surprise that one of the many controversies Trump had in 2016 was his views on immigration. Trump was touting up his own immigration successes including building the wall when pressed he responded “we're working on it very we're trying very hard “ and the kids “are so well taken care of”.
When in fact the parents of over 500 children in those camps can’t be found. Biden responded by saying “it's criminal” he continued “these 500-plus kids came with parents and makes us a laughing stock”.The moderator asked Biden about the record deportation during the Obama Administration. Biden admitted that they made a mistake and took too long to correct it.
Writer and research coordinator - Adrian Navarro and Jayleen Ulloa
Graphics - Jhem Picache
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