For much of the Thursday night debate, former Prez Trump’s pummelled Prez Biden verbally portraying him as an inadequate leader through a torrent of attacks that often had no basis or were misleading.
Trump went straight at Biden’s personal character, calling him “weak” and little respected by global leaders who were “laughing” at him. He tried to accuse Biden of being corrupt and referred to the president as a “Manchurian candidate” who was “paid by China,” a nod to frequent allegations of undue influence for which there is no evidence. He directly blamed Biden for a wave of immigrants “coming in and killing our citizens at a level we’ve never” seen, a hyperbolic claim not supported by statistics. And in a wild misrepresentation of facts, Trump falsely claimed that Biden “encouraged” Russia to attack Ukraine even though Biden has been consistently trying to rally support for Ukraine.
During the debate session Trump’s remarks were similar to his speeches during rallies against Biden. However, these attacks are notable because they came when the two men were standing just feet apart from each other. The CNN anchors focused on keeping peace rather than trying to verify Trump’s claims.
Biden did get in some punches though. He said Trump had “the morals of an alley cat” and accused him of having sex with porn star while his wife was pregnant. But mostly he was defending himself throughout.
Trump seized on one moment when Biden trailed off into stuttering speech saying: ”I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” But it was immigration where Trump made his most powerful arguments. Trump invoked the idea of “Biden migrant crime,” claiming that terrorists and criminals had crossed illegally into America due to lax border policy laid by Joe Biden. He accused Joe Bidden of killing “so many at our border” without providing any statistics.
Trump also went after Biden’s profile on the world stage. He argued that Putin was “laughing at” Biden’s leadership and at his failure to secure the release of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. Trump also resurrected accusations against Joe Bidden for receiving payments improperly from a Chinese energy company linked to his son Hunter. There is no evidence that any part of those payments ever went to the president.
