After the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden on September 29 drew widespread condemnation for chaos and constant interruptions, the Committee on Presidential Debates adjusted the rules for the last debate on October 22 to allow for candidates’ microphones to be muted when it was not their turn to speak. The debate covered six broad topic areas: COVID-19, national security, the economy, immigration, race, and climate change, and closed with a final question on leadership. Keep reading for what the candidates had to say about these crucial issues.
COVID-19 AND PANDEMIC RESPONSE
Trump opened the debate by touting his administration’s handling of the virus as a success, citing an 85% decrease in the virus’ mortality rate (the likelihood a person already infected will die). He promised a vaccine would be available for distribution by the military within weeks. When pressed by moderator Kristen Welker on experts’ much longer projections, he said his timeline was more realistic. He repeated his previous claim that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” when it comes to the pandemic. He invoked his own experience with having been infected, seemingly as evidence that the virus is conquerable. When Biden said Trump had refused to take responsibility for what many see as poor handling of the virus, Trump took responsibility, but then immediately thereafter blamed the virus on China. After insisting that Biden would have responded more slowly than he did, Trump also stressed the need for an open economy, saying, “we can’t close our nation, or we won’t have a nation” . He then attacked Biden’s plan as being the same as what his administration has already done. When questioned regarding his disparaging remarks about the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, he said he liked Fauci, but that he has been inconsistent.
Biden began by saying Trump didn’t deserve to be President, because he was responsible for over 200,000 U.S. Coronavirus deaths, and 1,000 more deaths per day. He returned to his previous criticism that Trump has no clear plan for pandemic response, then moved on to describing his own plan. Biden promised to double down on educating the public on the importance of facemasks, to make rapid testing available, and to lay out a national blueprint for safe reopening, including funds to help businesses and schools put the necessary measures in place. When Welker questioned him about how he would handle Americans’ uncertainty about the reliability of a possible COVID vaccine, he said he would insure transparency around the medical process used to develop the vaccine. He then criticized Trump’s handling of the pandemic, saying he has been dangerously dishonest, disrespectful of science, and reluctant to take responsibility for his role. Biden responded to Trump’s claim that “people are learning to live with [the pandemic]” with the assertion, “people are learning to die with it.” He also emphasized that safe reopening need not preclude a healthy economy.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Biden responded to Welker’s question about how to deal with election interference from Russia and Iran by saying any country meddling in the United States’ democratic process “will pay a price”. He emphasized Trump’s friendliness with Russian president Vladamir Putin and pointed out that Trump’s longtime advisor and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani may have been vulnerable to Russian manipulation. He claimed Russia didn’t want him to win because he had proven as Vice President he would stand up to them. He denied Trump’s accusations of improper behavior in Ukraine in connection with his son, Hunter Biden, saying no one involved in the impeachment trial could find anything improper about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there. He then brought up Trump’s questionable ties to China. Biden said he would make China abide by established international rules. He expressed suspicion toward Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, saying he was stalling. He also brought up previous accusations that Trump had attempted to use his executive authority to trade aid to Ukraine for dirt on Biden’s family. He emphasized that family scandals are a distraction from the real issues at stake, and closed by slamming Trump’s handling of North Korea, saying he had “legitimized” dictator Kim Jong Un’s brutal regime. When pressed by Welker, Biden said he would meet with Kim with the precondition that nuclear downsizing would be on the table.
Trump devoted a great deal of time to the accusations surrounding Hunter Biden. He also said Russia wants him to lose because he would be tough on them. He brought up failures to control Russia during the Obama administration, including the invasion of Crimea. In defense of his taxes, Trump said he was treated unfairly by the IRS, that he had in fact prepaid $10 million in taxes, and that $750–the number reported by the New York Times–was a filing fee (Biden reminded the audience that Trump had previously admitted to paying that small amount in federal income taxes and said he could get away with it because he was smart). He then turned to his own corruption allegations, saying he had been subject to a “phony witch hunt” since before he took office, despite the fact that investigations resulted in the convictions of several of his advisors. He claimed he had closed his bank account in China before he ran for office, even though one of his attorneys told the New York Times the account is still open. He said he was making China pay, and that he saved the American steel industry with his trade war. As for North Korea, Trump criticized the “mess” left to him by the Obama administration and said of Kim, “He’s a different kind of guy, but he probably thinks the same thing about me.”
ECONOMY
To begin the segment, Trump outlined what he says are his greatest accomplishments in healthcare. He boasted about getting rid of the individual mandate, and said that complete abolition of the Affordable Care Act was necessary. He promised to protect those with preexisting conditions in his new healthcare plan (which contrasts with his track record on the issue), then moved on to criticizing Biden’s plan. He claimed it would end private healthcare altogether, which Biden emphatically denied, and that “this whole country will come down” if it becomes law. He blamed the lack of a new stimulus bill on Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, suggesting she was politically motivated. He said previous relief bills were actually just a bailout for Democratic areas and for undocumented immigrants. When asked about raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, Trump said it would hurt small businesses and should be up to the states.
Biden clarified that his plan simply adds a “public option” to the current healthcare system, which he said in fact encourages competition in the insurance market. He said he is fully in support of private insurance. He also promised to negotiate with insurance companies to reduce premiums and drug prices. He transitioned to attacks on Trump’s healthcare record, saying there is still no clear Trumpcare healthcare plan. He said healthcare is a right, and re emphasized that the public option is a matter of choice for Americans. He said that under a second Trump Administration, the Social Security Administration would be bankrupt by 2023. To Trump’s claim that Pelosi has been holding up a relief bill, Biden countered that the lack of votes from Republican Congresspeople was the problem. He proposed bailing out small businesses and raising minimum wage, as well as providing help to schools. He also pointed out the lack of evidence that raising minimum wage harms small businesses.
IMMIGRATION
Trump justified his child separation policy with the claim that children were being smuggled across the border by drug cartels and coyotes, not their parents (this is false). He said the government was working on reuniting the 545 migrant children still separated from their parents with their families, but gave no details. He criticized the Obama-era policy “catch and release”, saying that less than 1% of asylum seekers allowed to stay in the country returned for hearings (this is false). He also accused the Obama administration of having originally implemented the policy, which Biden vehemently disputed.
Biden corrected Trump, saying the children taken at the border were separated from their parents, not criminals, and that the policy was intended as a deterrent to would-be immigrants. He stressed the plight of the 545 migrant children still without their parents, saying, “These kids are alone! It’s criminal!” He promised to recertify the Obama-era policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. When challenged by Trump as to why he hadn’t changed immigration policy while Vice President, he said the Obama administration had made what progress it could in eight years and added that he will be “President, not Vice President” if he wins this time around.
RACE
Biden said he has spent years working on improving his understanding of systemic racism in America (particularly police violence, in line with the question asked by Welker). He unequivocally stated, “there is institutional racism in America”. He then said that the general historical arc of the nation has been to move from inequality toward greater equality, but that President Trump was the first president to attempt to take that motion backward. In response to Trump’s critiques of the 1994 crime bill Biden helped pass as a senator, he acknowledged the bill was a “mistake,” and also said Trump had said it didn’t go far enough at the time, and had even pushed for the death penalty for the Central Park Five. Continuing in the vein of criminal justice reform, Biden said there should be no mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and that the way to get rid of them was to offer financial incentives to states to change their statutes. Biden also proposed that pure drug offences should not result in jail time, but in rehabilitation for the offenders. He said that Trump “pours fuel on every single racist fire” instead of addressing the issues productively. When Trump accused him of being “all talk, no action” and challenged him on why the Obama administration had not implemented any of the measures Biden is now proposing, Biden said, “We had a Republican Congress. That’s the answer.”
Trump spent much of his allotted two minutes criticizing Biden’s track record in criminal justice reform, most prominently the 1994 crime bill. He claimed Biden had called Black men “superpredators”, though it was actually First Lady Hillary Clinton who had used that term. Trump claimed “nobody has done more for the black community” than him, with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln. He also said, “I am the least racist person in this room.” He emphasized the criminal justice initiatives his administration has taken on, especially Opportunity Zones, which were a part of his 2017 tax bill. When Welker asked him about his past criticisms of the Black Lives Matter movement, he told a story about seeing protesters chanting an anti-police slogan, which he described as his first encounter with the movement.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Out of the gates, Trump touted his administration’s handling of the climate crisis, naming the Trillion Trees program and citing low carbon emissions. He compared America favorably with China, Russia, and India, which he described as “filthy”. He framed pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords as a positive, saying the United States was being treated unfairly in the agreement. Trump attacked Biden’s plan as an “economic disaster”, saying it was designed by “AOC plus three” (presumably referring to California Senator Alexandria Ocasio Cortez). He stressed the need for the United States to be energy independent, saying wind energy worked against this imperative by requiring the U.S. to purchase windmills from abroad. When challenged by Welker about the disproportionate effect pollution from factories has on people of color, who are more likely to live nearby, he said those families were probably benefiting economically from the factories. He also took credit for saving the oil industry, and sounded the alarm against Biden’s call to transition away from oil as an energy source.
Biden opened by saying America has a “moral obligation” to handle climate change. He said that, given the time sensitivity of the issue, we can’t afford another four years of the Trump Administration. He cited the support for his plan expressed by both climate scientists and major labor unions as proof that it is both environmentally and economically viable. He explained a few key points of his action plan, including installing charging stations for electric vehicles on highways and retrofitting buildings to reduce energy loss. He emphasized that the Biden plan would create jobs as well as working toward a healthy environment. When asked by Welker if he rules out banning fracking, Biden said firmly that he does. As for Trump’s point that the families living near factories were benefiting economically, Biden said, “It doesn’t matter how you’re paying them, it matters how you’re keeping them safe.” Finally, Biden expressed his commitment to transferring the economy away from its dependence on oil and toward renewable energy sources, and promised to rejoin the Paris Accord.
To close the debate, Welker asked one last question of the candidates: Imagine you have won the presidential election, and this is your inaugural address. What do you say to those who did not vote for you?
Trump boasted of his administration’s record with economic recovery from the recession caused by Coronavirus, and said “success will bring us together.” In contrast, he said, a Biden Administration would plunge the country into economic depression.
Biden began by promising that he would represent all Americans, not just those who voted for him. He stressed emphasizing “science over fiction, fact over fear” and said the next four years constitute an “enormous opportunity to make things better.”
