Biden; was he Trump-ed in the Presidential debate?
The first presidential debate between two presidential candidates happened over 60 years ago. Allot has changed since then, as chaos happened in Cleveland, former Vice President Joe Biden, and current President Trump, faced off in the first televised presidential debate of the 2020 election.
The pair traded blows, personal insults, countless interruptions, and a lack of moderation; that made the event seem more temperamental than presidential.
During the 90-minute debate, it was hard to find 5 minutes without the candidates speaking over each other. Despite Trumps campaign team agreeing to allow Biden equal time to respond without interruption; Trump interrupted pretty regularly, with Biden responding in kind; in what descended into an apparent flagrant disregard for mutual respect, as well as the rules of such an important debate.
It became exhausting to watch, and apparently even more so exhausting to participate in, as Biden responded in kind, lashing out at the President, saying; “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential”.
Trump seemed uncomposed deflecting from the failures of his presidency. When he wasn’t interjecting on Biden’s time, lying seemed to become his crutch, even referring to several conspiracy theories.
Trump then resorted to personal attacks against Bidens’ children; one of whom is deceased, and claiming the other was dishonourably discharged from the military for cocaine use. To which Biden replied; ‘‘My son, like a lot of people we know at home had a drug problem … he’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it and I’m proud of him.’
Trump, responding on Covid19, stated that Biden’s leadership would have led to more deaths. Although, under President Obama; Biden manged the swine flu epidemic without shutting down the economy, or achieving anywhere near the same levels of morbidity, as Biden put it; only “14,000 people died not 200,000”.
It’s worth remembering; that under Obama, Biden as Vice President helped pull America out of an economic recession, set up Obama Care, helped provide health care access to millions of Americans, reduced national crime by up to 15%, and even arguably won the war on terror by killing Osama Bin Laden; whilst pulling record numbers of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the last four years; Trump has one of the highest global death tolls in a pandemic, has brought America into a recession, deconstructed Obama Care, goaded civil unrest by turning a blind eye to police brutality, risked World War 3, by killing an Iranian General, as well as dropping more bombs and troops into Iraq and Afghanistan, than the previous 4 years under his predecessor.
The 2020 presidential debate has been described as a train wreck; Trump heckled, bullied, and lied through the debate; Biden could barely get words across. Reminiscent of campaign debates in 2016 against Hilary, will Trumps bullying tactics be able to win him the election again? Or has America had enough of this chaos.