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WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden clashed in their first televised debate on Tuesday, exchanging accusations about voter fraud, the economy and the coronavirus pandemic.
AFP examines what the candidates said on the key issues.
RISK OF VOTE FRAUD BY MAIL
Trump falsely said that voting by mail will lead to “fraud the likes of which has never been seen before”, while Biden accurately claimed that,
“No one has ever established that there is fraud related to vote-by-mail ballots.”
In May, Ellen Weintraub of the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) tweeted that “there is simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud.” The comment was part of a 66-tweet thread on the topic that provided extensive supporting evidence.
In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified at a Senate national security hearing: “We take all election-related threats very seriously … historically we have not seen any kind of coordinated voter fraud effort. national in an important election, whether by mail or otherwise. “
Elections expert Max Feldman, a lawyer for the Elections and Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told AFP: “Voting by mail has been a safe part of our electoral system for many years.”
In addition, an analysis by the Brennan Center and the Voting Rights Project, a 2012 investigation into electoral security at the national level, said that while absentee ballots are more susceptible to fraud than voting in person, fraud rates are infinitesimals.
“An American is … more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit vote-by-mail fraud,” said the Brennan Center analysis.
TRUMP’S ECONOMIC RECORD
Trump said his administration “built the greatest economy in history,” a statement he has made repeatedly since entering the White House. This is misleading.
The president’s record on the economy has been undermined by the devastating consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Polls, however, tend to remain positive for him when voters are asked who they trust the most to create jobs and economic growth.
This is due to Trump’s career as an entrepreneur, a tax cut he signed in as president, and a hitherto strong stock market, which, on paper at least, drives savings for retirement. But Trump’s message on the economy is prone to hype and hyperbole.
Gross domestic product (GDP) and employment figures are the main measures of the economic health of the United States.
In Trump’s favor, unemployment hit a 50-year low of 3.5% in December 2019. In January of this year, however, the Labor Department issued an update that was less positive. It showed that job growth slowed significantly in the first three years of the Trump presidency.
About 6.5 million jobs were added between 2017 and 2019: 2.11 million, 2.31 million (in 2018, Trump’s best year) and 2.10 million. This compares with more than eight million jobs – 3.00 million, 2.72 million and 2.35 million – in the previous three years, under Barack Obama.
The pandemic has revolutionized the job market.
Unemployment peaked at 14.7% in April: Nearly seven million Americans applied for government help in just one week in March. Since then, millions of those lost jobs have returned. In August 2020, the unemployment rate was 8.4%.
The best year of Trump’s presidency saw a 3 percent increase in GDP in 2018, compared to 3.1% in 2015 under Obama. As recently as 2004 and 2005, under President George W. Bush, the economy grew 3.8% and 3.5%, respectively. None of these three presidents have come close to reaching a historic record; the 1950s and 1960s saw years when growth was more than 5 percent per year.
US stocks hit record highs under Trump. The index peaked on February 12, 2020, at 29,551.42 points. But as business sentiment slumped due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Dow Jones plunged and closed at 19,173.98 on March 20, ending the index’s worst week since 2008.
Much of that lost ground has been made up. On September 29, the Dow closed at 27,452.66.
Obama inherited a market in the depths of the global financial crisis. When he left office in 2017, the Dow Jones had more than doubled, posting a cumulative growth of 148.3%.
In the 44 months of Trump’s first term, the Dow Jones has grown 38.5%.
THE TRUMP CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE
Biden accused Trump of hiding the danger of the coronavirus. This is true.
Trump told investigative journalist Bob Woodward in a phone call on February 7, 2020 that the virus is “somewhat deadly” and is “more deadly than … even your strenuous flu.”
“You just breathe the air, that’s how it happens,” Trump said in the recording, which Woodward released earlier this month.
Although Trump knew the virus was dangerous, he did not reflect it in his public comments, instead repeatedly downplaying the risks it posed.
On February 27, Trump had said that the risk posed by the virus to the American people was “very low” and that the number of cases “will drop to almost zero” in a few days, during one of his daily briefings on the virus. virus. . He then compared it to the common flu on March 9.
Trump told Woodward on March 19 that he “always wanted to downplay it,” adding, “I still like to downplay it, because I don’t want to create panic.”
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