Special Report: The Last Presidential Debate Part 1
(Disclaimer: La Tonique Media LLC does not represent any political ideology. While we do not espouse any political beliefs, we do seek to provide a balance perspective by incorporating voices from both sides of the political spectrum.)
By JTTC and Stepan Gauvreau
On Thursday, October 22nd of 2020, the last presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump occurred. Like many Americans, the change from a drawn-out shouting match was a welcome change. The moderator, Kristen Welker, managed to keep the debate more civil, but that didn’t make it less contentious. We have examined the debate based on several quotes from the candidates on their key policy points and commitments made during the debate. There will be less of a focus on non-policy related attacks or points made by either candidate. We will then provide a short analysis of these policy points.
(Editorial Note: While the interpretation of the debate may be influenced by an individual’s partisan belief, we wish to provide the reader with the resources to come to their own conclusions. In an effort to do this, a transcript of the debate can be found here and a video recording of it can be found here.)
Watch the final presidential debate of the 2020 election between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Part 1: Moderators, COVID-19 and National Security.
The Moderator
Before getting too far into the candidates’ issues, it’s important to look at the moderator for the event. The moderator was Kristen Welker. Kristen Welker is currently an American journalist and White House correspondent who works for NBC News. Previous to the debate Welker had been the subject of partisan attacks on her credibility, with even the President stating that “She’s always been terrible and unfair”. Despite this, Welker’s actual performance at the debate was widely lauded as a strong and effective moderator. Even Trump stated during the debate “so far, I respect very much the way you’re handling this, I have to say.” Whoever the winner is in November, the true winner of this debate was Kristen Welker.
COVID-19
MODERATOR TOPIC QUESTION: The country is heading into a dangerous new phase. More than 40,000 Americans are in the hospital tonight with COVID, including record numbers here in Tennessee. And since the two of you last shared a stage, 16,000 Americans have died from COVID. So please be specific. How would you lead the country during this next stage of the coronavirus crisis?
TRUMP (answered first):
· “So, as you know, 2.2 million people modeled out, were expected to die.”
· “I can tell you from personal experience, I was in the hospital. I had it and I got better. And I will tell you that I had something that they gave me, a therapeutic, I guess they would call it.”
· “there was some spikes and surges and other places, they will soon be gone. We have a vaccine that’s coming. It’s ready. It’s going to be announced within weeks.”
o “it’s not a guarantee, but it will be by the end of the year….I think within a matter of weeks and it will be distributed very quickly.”
o As soon as we have the vaccine and we expect to have a 100 million vials. As soon as we have the vaccine, he’s ready to go” (“he” referenced here is Army General Gustave Perna).
· “We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away.”
o “We have to open our school and we can’t close up our nation, or you’re not going to have a nation.”
BIDEN:
· “220,000 Americans dead.”
· “We’re in a situation where there are a thousand deaths a day now. A thousand deaths a day. And there are over 70,000 new cases per day. Compared to what’s going on in Europe as the New England Medical Journal said, they’re starting from a very low rate. We’re starting from a very high rate.”
· “The expectation is we’ll have another 200,000 Americans dead between now and the end of the year. If we just wore these masks, the president’s own advisors have told him, we can save a 100,000 lives.”
o “everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time….investing in rapid testing….set up national standards as to how to open up schools and open up businesses so they can be safe and give them…the financial resources to be able to do that.”
· “Oh, well, no. I’m not shutting down today, but there are … Look, you need standards.”
ANALYSIS:
For anyone not aware, Trump’s 2.2 million casualties assertion is a slightly misleading statement. 2.2 million is the number of individuals that could have died if absolutely nothing was done to impede the virus. Unless the Trump administration’s tactic was to literally do nothing, then the casualty count would never reach 2.2 million. The President, in remarks in the Rose Garden on March 29, 2020, acknowledged that 100,000-200,000 casualties was the current estimate. Biden’s statement on the 200,000 additional American’s dead by the end of the year isn’t entirely accurate either. Projections from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation put the estimate at about a grim 80,000-130,000 depending on mandates and mask usage.
COVID-19 is not looking like it’s going to be going away anytime soon and things aren’t looking much brighter. While the situation started to look better in August and the beginning of September, data by the John Hopkins University of Medicine is indicating a reversing national trend. Furthermore, data on states indicates many states are having increasing numbers of average cases a day.
Both candidates have an eye on the economy in their pandemic plans. The main distinction between the two seems to be on the speed of a vaccine. Trump is relying on a vaccine to become viable soon and then being able to speedily distribute this vaccine. This would allow him to remove most if not all restrictions but poses questions on the affordability of a vaccine. On the other hand, Biden’s approach is reliant on the belief that a vaccine will not be available to the public soon. The hope appears to be to find a balance between resuming economic activity while having the number of new infections move towards a downwards trajectory.
(A person walks past the art installation "IN AMERICA How Could This Happen..." by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg on the DC Armory Parade Ground, in Washington D.C., October 23.)
(Hannah McKay | Reuters)
National Security
MODERATOR TOPIC QUESTION: “Just last night, top intelligence officials confirmed again that both Russia and Iran are working to influence this election. Both countries have obtained US voter registration information, these officials say, and Iran sent intimidating messages to Florida voters. What would you do to put an end to this threat?”
TRUMP:
· nobody tougher than me on Russia, between the sanctions, between all of what I’ve done with NATO. I’ve got the NATO countries to put up an extra $130 billion going to $420 billion a year. That’s to guard against Russia. I sold, while he was selling pillows and sheets, I sold tank busters to Ukraine.
-On North Korea
· “They tried to meet with him. He wouldn’t do it. He didn’t like Obama. He didn’t like him. He wouldn’t do it.”
o “North Korea, we’re not in a war. We have a good relationship. People don’t understand. Having a good relationship with leaders of other countries is a good thing.”
BIDEN (answered first):
· “any country, no matter who it is, that interferes in American elections will pay a price.”
· “ to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think the President has said anything to Putin about it.”
· “I don’t understand why this President is unwilling to take on Putin when he’s actually paying bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, when he’s engaged in activities that are trying to destabilize all of NATO.”
· “we’re in a situation where China would have to play by the rules internationally as well. When I met with Xi and when I was still vice-president, he said we’re setting up air identification zones in the South China Sea. You can’t fly through them. I said we’re going to fly through them. We just flew B-52, B-1 bombers through it. We’re not going to pay attention. They have to play by the rules.”
-On North Korea
· On the condition that he would agree that he would be drawing down his nuclear capacity. The Korean Peninsula should be a nuclear free zone.
o “President Obama said, “We’re going to talk about denuclearization. We’re not going to legitimize you and we’re going to continue to push stronger and stronger sanctions on you.” That’s why he wouldn’t meet with us.”
(North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walks with President Trump north of the military demarcation line that divides North and South Korea, in the Joint Security Area of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, 2019)
(Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images)
ANALYSIS:
It was nice to hear both candidates talk about asserting their commitment to the United States, especially because one of them is going to represent our nation on the world stage. It was less nice to watch them descend into bickering over who is more corrupt before giving more substantial answers on their actual policy in this field. Trump’s assertion of an extra $130 to $400 billion a year is incorrect but it is accurate for the total over the past 5 years. It's possible Trump may have forgotten the metric of time at the moment but in either case, increased military spending by our NATO allies is welcomed. As for the Russian bounties claim, Biden was not entirely accurate. While Trump has stated that he has not discussed the bounties with Putin, he has also asserted that they were false but if found to be true that his administration would retaliate. It’s unknown whether this claim is true, but it is also unclear if Russian state actors are in fact paying bounties to kill US troops, it’s not like Putin would admit if they were.
As for China, both the Trump and Obama administrations have had continuing confrontations with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea. The Obama administration did manage to get the Chinese military to back off strategically important territory in this Sea. The Trump administration has also conducted roughly six Freedom of Navigation Operations in South China in the last 4 years. In either case firm but careful statesmanship is necessary to prevent this point of tension from boiling over into an unnecessary conflict.
North Korea was the main division between the two. Currently, North Korea is a nuclear-armed country with capable enough rocket technology to strike the mainland United States. On top of this, they were estimated in 2017 to be able to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium to produce roughly 12 nuclear weapons a year. On one hand, Trump seems to favor a more friendly approach based on his personal “good relationship” with Kim Jong-Un. On the other, Biden appears to favor a minimum contact high sanction approach to North Korea, so long as they refuse to give up their nuclear arsenal. An insistence on working with other world leaders and preventing nuclear conflict is certainly positive. However, this kind of diplomacy cannot come at the threat of a nuclear strike on our nation. It’s easy to retreat into partisan camps on this issue but the reality is that this is a topic that literally involves nuclear rockets. This is an issue where the prospect of millions of people dying in a nuclear exchange as a result of the strike or its after-effects is all too real.
In either case a more robust discussion on national security would have been welcome. Disappointingly the discussion quickly shifted to a drawn-out exchange of insults.
Part 2: American Families and Race in the United States (coming soon).
Stepan and JTTC are political writers for La Tonique.