2020
DEBATES
The debate quickly devolved into cross-talk and
recriminations.
By LARA
SELIGMAN, JACQUELINE FELDSCHER, MICHAEL STRATFORD, SAM MINTZ, CATHERINE KIM and
KATY O'DONNELL
09/29/2020
09:49 PM EDT
Updated:
09/29/2020 10:38 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/29/trump-biden-debate-key-moments-423352
President
Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have spent months sparring
from afar, laying the groundwork for an intense showdown on Tuesday night.
Here are
the key moments so far from their first primetime debate:
Trump and
Biden sparred in the opening moments over the consequences if the Supreme Court
overturns the Affordable Care Act.
In
answering the first question of the night, Biden argued that if Judge Amy Coney
Barrett is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice and the court overturns former
President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, 100 million people who have
pre-existing conditions will lose their coverage.
“And so
it's just not appropriate to do this before this election,” Biden said,
referring to a Senate vote on Barrett.
Trump
disputed the statement that 100 million people have pre-existing conditions,
before pivoting to attack Biden for his own health care plan which he said will
“extinguish” the health care of 180 million people who currently have private
coverage.
Biden said
“that’s simply not true,” as Trump accused him of “going to socialist
medicine.”
According
to an analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services, 50-129 million
Americans have some type of pre-existing health condition. Under Obamacare
starting in 2014, insurance companies cannot refuse to offer health coverage to
these Americans as they previously could. And according to the Congressional
Research Service, private health insurance covered an estimated 178 million
Americans.
Trump tries
to steamroll the moderator
Chris
Wallace
President
Donald Trump tangled with debate moderator Chris Wallace early in the night,
repeatedly interrupting a question about why he hasn’t released a comprehensive
health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
“If I may
ask my question, sir,” Wallace, the Fox News journalist, pressed as Trump kept
cutting him off as he tried to ask the question.
“First of
all, I guess I’m debating you, not him,” Trump shot back at Wallace. “I’m not
surprised.”
Biden
snapped at Trump just about 20 minutes into the debate after a line of
questioning on the Supreme Court went off the rails.
“Will you
shut up, man?” Biden said after Trump repeatedly talked over him. “This is so
unpresidential.”
At times,
the debate was an unintelligible jumble of the two candidates and Wallace
talking over each other. As Wallace tried to move to the next topic area, Biden
quipped “that was a really productive segment, wasn’t it? Keep yapping, man.”
While
talking about the future of universal healthcare, Biden asked “do you have any
idea what this clown is doing? I tell you what, he is not for any help for any
people needing health care.”
Who’s
smarter? Debate turns into intelligence measuring contest
The debate
quickly became personal, and that continued when Biden said that many more
people would die from Covid-19 unless Trump got “a lot smarter, a lot quicker.”
The
president lashed back at the former vice president by referring to Biden
comments from last year that have been taken out of context by conservative
media.
“He said he
went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn’t go
to Delaware State,” Trump said. “He graduated the lowest or almost the lowest
in your class. Don’t ever use the word ‘smart’ with me.”
Biden’s
comments from Oct. 19, saying that he “got his start” at Delaware State
University, were actually referring to announcing his run for U.S. Senate at
the campus in 1972, according to the Delaware News Journal.
Biden
responded with exasperation to Trump’s attack: “Oh, give me a break.”
Trump broke
out his mask on stage to deny accusations that he questions the effectiveness
of masks.
Trump added
that he selectively wears them, and pointed out that he didn’t have to put one
on on Tuesday night because people were tested and took the proper safety
measures. Meanwhile, the president took a jab at his opponent: “I don't wear a
mask like [Biden],” Trump said. “Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He
could be speaking 200 feet away from you, and he’s wearing the biggest mask
I’ve ever seen.”
Biden fully
embraced the attack of being an avid mask-wearer. “Masks make a big difference,”
he said. “If we just wore masks between now and social distanced between now
and January, we would probably save up to 100,000 lives.”
Trump
pushed back against Biden’s enthusiasm for masks and wrongly said Dr. Anthony
Fauci disagreed with scientists who promoted protective gear. Fauci promoted
the universal wearing of masks in August.
Biden:
‘You're the worst president America has ever had’
In a heated
exchange over Trump’s tax returns, Biden accused his opponent of being “the
worst president America has ever had.”
Biden
attacked Trump for taking advantage of the U.S. tax code and vowed to eliminate
tax cuts under Trump’s tax law. Trump cut in to ask why Biden had not already
done so over his past “25 years” as a senator.
“Because
you weren’t president, screwing things up,” Biden deadpanned. “You're the worst
president America has ever had. Come on.”
Trump
retorted sharply that he had “done more in 47 months than you’ve done in 47
years.”
Minutes
after the exchange, Biden’s campaign doubled down, tweeting from his account
that “Donald Trump is the worst president we've ever had.”
Trump
pushes back on tax report, demurs on releasing returns
Trump
insisted he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017,
the two years in which the New York Times reported he paid just $750 in a
bombshell report on Sunday.
When Biden
interjected, “show us your taxes then,” Trump repeated the claim he has made
since entering politics five years ago — that he will release his tax returns
once they are no longer under audit. Trump has said he could not release them
while the audit is ongoing — a claim his own IRS commissioner has refuted.
The Times
reported that Trump paid zero income tax in 11 of the 18 years the paper
examined, citing decades’ worth of “tax-return data … for Mr. Trump and the
hundreds of companies that make up his business organization.” Trump then paid
$750 in 2016 and again in 2017. The newspaper found that Trump reduced his tax
bill by reporting massive losses and taking advantage of tax breaks and
refunds.
Biden
suggested he would eliminate the breaks Trump has taken but falsely suggested
that they were isolated to the cuts included in the 2017 tax law that Trump
championed.
“The tax
code that put him in a position that he pays less tax than a schoolteacher on
the money a schoolteacher makes is because of him — he says he's smart because
he can take advantage of the tax code, and he does take advantage of the tax
code,” Biden said. “That's why I'm going to eliminate the Trump tax.”
In fact,
Trump has taken advantage of longstanding deductions, according to the Times report.
The paper said it did not obtain return data for 2018 and 2019, after Trump’s
tax law took effect.
The Times
report also suggested Trump has taken on significant debt, with some $300
million in loans he has personally guaranteed set to come due over the next
four years. Trump disputed that detail on Tuesday too, saying, “I am totally
under-leveraged because the assets are extremely good.”
Biden calls
Trump ‘racist’ for ending diversity training
Biden
explicitly called Trump “racist” during an exchange about the president’s
recent move to end racial sensitivity training among federal agencies.
Responding
to a question about why he ended training that addresses white privilege or
critical race theory, Trump said he made the decision because “it’s racist,”
that “a lot of people were complaining,” and that it reflected a “radical
revolution” taking place throughout the country.
“If you
look at the people, we were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to
teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas,” Trump said. “They were
teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it's a racist place, and
they were teaching people to hate our country and I'm not going to allow that
to happen.”
Biden
interjected that the premise was false.
“Nobody is
doing that,” Biden said. “He's racist.”
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