Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian
President Trump’s final debate with former Vice President Joe Biden was his last chance to reach a national audience with anything resembling a coherent argument for re-election after repelling voters in their first debate by obnoxiously shouting over Biden and moderator Chris Wallace for 90 minutes turning it into an unwatchable disaster.
Unfortunately for Trump, the only thing more damaging to his election prospects than a totally unwatchable debate is a watchable one during which Americans hear his dangerous lies and nonsensical conspiracy theories. This time Trump’s worst lies were effectively refuted not only by Biden but by the facts threatening American lives in what many experts fear will be the deadliest wave yet of the coronavirus pandemic. The day after the presidential debate the U.S. reported the highest daily number of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began nine months ago.
The 82,900 new infections shattered the previous daily record of 76,533 set in mid-July. In the past two weeks, 24 states have broken their records for single-day highs of new cases. That includes Wisconsin, which began admitting patients to a makeshift field hospital at State Fair Park because more than 90% of intensive care beds around the state are full. The pandemic has infected more than 8.5 million Americans and killed about 225,000. Medical experts warn it’s just the beginning of a soaring cold weather surge that could double that death toll by year’s end.
Rounding the Corner?
That didn’t stop Trump from falsely claiming during the debate “we’re rounding the corner” and “it’s going away, okay?” No, it isn’t. It’s still spreading even through the White House. Biden’s simple response: “This is the same fellow who told you, ‘This is going to end by Easter.’ This is the same fellow who told you ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to end this by the summer.’ We’re about to go into a dark winter and he has no clear plan.” Trump never developed any national strategy to protect Americans because he wanted to keep blaming his collapsing national economy on public health measures taken by Democratic governors.
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NBC moderator Kristen Welker also tried to get Trump to address public concerns about his inflammatory racial attacks on prominent African Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump responded by repeating his previous absurd claim he’s done more for African Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln, completely erasing President Lyndon Johnson and the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s.
Trump also pulled out that old racist favorite: “I’m the least racist person in this room.” It was an especially inappropriate response to Welker, an African American. Who knew, though, whether Trump dismissing her as less than a person was based on her race or gender? Many of the other people in the room he identified as more racist than he was were members of his own family. Biden was more accurate. “Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history,” Biden said. “He pours fuel on every single racist fire, every single one.”
Kids in Cages
Perhaps most damaging to Trump, the debate focused attention once again on the intentional cruelty of Trump’s vicious policy of “kids in cages.” Americans were appalled when they learned in 2018 Trump for a year had been separating even babies and toddlers from parents crossing the southern border fleeing violence in their home countries. Trump revoked the horrific practice in June 2018 amid growing outrage in response to photos of tiny children torn away from their mothers and audio recordings of terrified children wailing uncontrollably in chain link pens where they slept on concrete floors under mylar blankets.
Trump claimed in the debate the children were “well taken care of” after being brought into the U.S. by dangerous “coyote” smugglers. He wanted everyone to know Biden and the Obama administration built those cages. It’s true a warehouse was converted into an emergency shelter in 2014 to hold a surge of families, single juveniles and single adults crossing the border. But it was Trump’s inhumane attempt to discourage Latino immigration that filled those pens with babies and toddlers forcibly separated from their parents.
“Coyotes didn’t bring them over,” Biden said. “Their parents were with them!... Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated and now they cannot find over 500 of the sets of those (deported) parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal! It’s criminal!”
Trump kept trying to change the subject and focus the debate on some mysterious “laptop from hell” containing Russian emails to someone named Hunter, who’s not running for president. Viewers couldn’t understand any of Trump’s meaningless gibberish unless they followed nutty rightwing websites filled with Russian disinformation about Biden and Obama faking Osama bin Laden’s death and murdering Seal Team Six to cover up their evil plot. The members of Seal Team Six deny they’ve been murdered.
To read more Taking Liberties columns by Joel McNally, click here.
