US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump battled from the outset of their debate on Thursday night, sparring over the nation’s economy, global affairs, and immigration across the Mexican border into the US.
Biden gave Trump the damning title of, “The worst president in American history”, To add salt in the wound, he said : “This guy has no sense of American democracy.”
Trump, who was the main aggressor in the debate against a raspy-voiced Biden, returned the insult, claiming Biden was the worst. During the showdown, the pair often accused one other of lying. A post-debate CNN poll found that Trump won by 67% to Biden’s 33%, and several Democrats expressed concern over Biden’s performance.
Trump regularly tied the country’s woes to the surge of migrants crossing the southern US border with Mexico, claiming they were harming the world’s largest economy and taking Americans’ jobs.
During his criticism, he added: “They’re killing our citizens at a level we’ve never seen before.” While there have been a handful of high-profile cases in which migrants have been accused of murder, there is no evidence that migrants are committing more crimes than native-born Americans.
On the tail of the comment, Biden said: “He is exaggerating, he’s lying,” pointing out that 40% fewer migrants are crossing the border since he recently tightened entrance regulations.
Trump stated that if he wins the November 5 election, he would ensure that Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is over before he enters office next January. He also promised to get Wall Street Journal writer Evan Gershkovich out of a Russian jail in the same period.
Amid the heated talk, Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a war criminal,” and sarcastically challenged Trump, “You think he’ll stop with Ukraine?” He called Trump “a guy who wants to get us out of NATO,” and undermined him by adding, “he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
When it was Biden’s turn to hit back, he claimed Trump had “the morals of an alley cat” as he criticized him for his conviction last month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a 130,000-dollar hush money payment to a porn star just before his successful 2016 election in an attempt to silence her, all counts were denied by Trump.
Biden chose not to strategically use his advantage point to criticize Trump on abortion rights, which is a strong topic for Democrats and a weak area for the former Republican president.
Instead, Biden rapidly shifted from abortion to immigration – a vulnerability for the Democrats — rambling through his response without delivering a strong point about defending reproductive rights.
When the moderators queried the senior candidates about their fitness to serve, their comments devolved into a golf debate.
Trump stated that he “aced” two cognitive tests and that Biden “can’t hit a ball 50 yards.”
Retaliating to Trump’s statement Biden said he would be “happy to play golf if you carry your bag, think you can do it?” Trump answered, “Let’s not act like children.” The US politicians proceeded to fight over who was to blame for recent inflationary trends.
According to Trump, Biden’s words “caused the inflation, and it’s killing Black families and Hispanic families and just about everyone.” The former president elaborated saying some communities “can’t buy groceries anymore, they look at the cost of food where it’s doubled, tripled, and quadrupled.”
The current president was under intense pressure to demonstrate that he remained fit for office, and the discussion was billed as an opportunity to dispel worries about his age.
During the debate, Biden had the challenge of keeping up with the swift changes of topics as he attempted to reconcile disparate subjects. At one point, he lost his line of thought and referred to billionaires as trillionaires.