Trump Vs. Biden: First Debates

On September 29, the first debate took place in the United States between the main candidates for the post of the American president - Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. This is the first round  out of three for the candidates. Less than a month remains before the key elections, which will determine the further vector of the country's development, and the closer the date, the tougher the accusations of the opponents. Biden told Trump that he was "the worst president of the America  that has ever been," and Trump retorted, "I've done more in 47 months than you have in 47 years, Joe."

Trump and debate moderator Chris Wallace sparred so hard,it pushed Trump to the line: "First of all, I guess I’m debating you, not him. But that's okay. I'm not surprised."

The overall impression of the debate is chaotic and unproductive. "Sleepy Joe" finally woke up during the debate, but this did not add credibility to him, and Trump pushed, in the words of the media, "like a tank" his opponent. As a result, the painful topics - medicine, social guarantees, etc. - were only superficially touched upon, and such important questions as ideology and geopolitics were generally left out.

What was the debate about

Debate moderator Chris Wallace chose six topics: Trump and Biden's past, the Supreme Court, Covid-19, the economy, racial protests and urban violence, and election integrity. The candidates mostly adhered to these topics, but constantly interrupted each other with caustic remarks.

So, when discussing the medical crisis in the United States, both candidates were not impressive, and rather expressed some strange ideas. Biden said he wants to expand Obamacare, and that he suggests people can and will have private insurance. Trump accuses Biden of the Democratic Party wanting to switch to "socialist medicine."

Of course, the discussions took place in the context of the coronavirus pandemic crisis in the United States, where more than 7 million Americans were infected  and more than 200,000 people died. Biden (a staunch supporter of Bill Gates' approach to vaccines) said Trump had no plan to fight Covid-19. Trump retorted that the US is making a vaccine.

They also discussed the question of the candidacy of a new judge of the US Supreme Court. Biden believes that a new person should be appointed only after the elections (hoping for his victory), while Trump insisted that Republicans still have the right to elect a judge themselves, according to the law.

Much of the debate has been devoted to climate issues, at the most superficial level. Trump acknowledged that, to some extent, greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the warming of the planet, but ridiculed the plans of some governors to phase out cars in this regard.

Of course, in the course of the debate, the topic of racism and white suprematism was touched upon (lately this has been inevitably linked).

Biden blamed Trump for failing to publicly denounce white marchers in Charlottesville in 2017, and praised himself for supporting protesters following the assassination of George Floyd. Trump said that under Biden, such chaos would have been even more harsh, and although he advised the right-wing Proud Boys to "step aside", he also criticized the left and antifa (which, he said, are the real cause of violence in American cities).

The candidates recalled uncomfortable scandalous topics to each other. Biden poked Trump with the topic of $ 750 - a ridiculous tax amount that opponents of the president claim he paid as federal income tax in 2016. Trump reminded Biden of his son Hunter's corruption cases.

At the same time, foreign policy as such took almost no time for debates, and when this happened, Biden, as a rule, found it difficult to answer, and Trump actively attacked. Regarding Trump's largely unsuccessful attempts to fix the trade deficit with China, Biden said, “He's talking about the art of bargaining. China has perfected the art of theft. " He accused Trump of facing a higher trade deficit with China during Trump's tenure.

The rest was an exchange of insults and jabs. But if Trump at least took the position of an attacking provocateur, then Biden looked frankly boring. As Trump's campaign chief Bill Stepien describes his impressions of the debate: “Joe Biden was revealed as too weak to be president and spent most of the evening on his heels, unable to explain his 47 years of failure as a Washington politician, and even his friends in the liberal media will be unable to spin this as anything other than a miserable failure. Biden is too weak to stand up to the radical left, too weak to stand up to China, too weak to stand up to anti-police leftists, too weak to lead on the economy, and too weak to defeat Covid."