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This was the last big chance for Trump to attract undecided voters.
It was a more civilized debate, but not without strong attacks between opponents.
Donald Trump, who is trying to be re-elected as president of the United States, and his opponent for the Democratic party, Joe Biden, staged an intense confrontation on Thursday night (10/22) with an exchange of personal accusations. And this time, respecting the rules of the debate, the last one before the elections, on November 3.
The event, held in Nashville (Tennessee), was marked by mutual accusations of corruption.
Trump cited allegations without evidence that Biden personally profited from his son’s overseas business. The Democrat, for his part, criticized the lack of transparency in the president’s tax returns.
The Republican candidate also tried to paint Biden as the “typical politician”, with constant references to his long career and, mainly, to his two terms as vice president of Barack Obama.
“Why hasn’t he done anything in eight years? … He talks a lot and doesn’t act,” Trump said in response to Biden’s proposals.
In reaction, the Democratic candidate tried to portray Trump as a president who led the country into a deep crisis, but who did not assume his responsibilities, in addition to dividing Americans and being disconnected from the lives of ordinary people.
“This is not his family or mine, but his family,” Biden said, looking at the camera and speaking directly to the middle-class voters he was trying to connect with.
“I will be president of all the states, neither blue nor red.”
In the opinion of Paul Danahar, editor-in-chief of the BBC in the United States, the debate “was a victory adjusted by points for President Trump.”
“He had good attack lines and benefited from low expectations due to the first debate.”
However, the journalist specializing in American politics says that the president “needed to raze his opponent to contain the Biden campaign, but he did not succeed.”
The meeting between the two candidates was surrounded by expectations due to the chaotic previous debate, the first in the series, on September 29, which ended up becoming a confusing and highly criticized confrontation.
Credit, fake images
The last presidential debate took place 12 days before the elections
In addition, the second debate, which would take place on October 15, ended up canceled because Trump contracted covid-19, and his campaign rejected a virtual event between the candidates.
Twelve days before the election, at a time when millions of Americans are already exercising their right to vote by mail or early, Thursday’s debate represented a crucial opportunity for both of them to try not just to get their message across to large numbers. of voters. potential voters, as well as a differentiation from the rival.
“Learning to die”
The debate began with the coronavirus, a crucial issue in the country most affected by the pandemic in the world.
Despite the 8 million infected and more than 220,000 murdered by covid-19, Trump defended his administration’s management, claiming to have taken great steps and prevented the death of 2.2 million people.
“This is a global problem, and the leaders of many countries have congratulated me for what we have managed to do here,” said the US president.
“We are learning to live with it,” Trump said, insisting that the economy and schools should reopen and that people were losing their jobs amid a surge in suicides and drug problems.
At that time, the Democratic candidate was blunt: “The person responsible for so many deaths cannot continue to be president.”
“He said that we are learning to live with it (the coronavirus). We are learning to die with it,” Biden said.
Attacks by Politics of immigration
The issue of immigration was the scene of one of the toughest parts of the debate.
Biden criticized Trump’s policy for the area, especially emphasizing the controversial decision to separate families on the border with Mexico.
As a result of this policy, which the White House ended up repealing after strong social pressure, there are currently almost 500 migrant children who are alone in the country because their parents were not found because they were deported, according to activists in the sector.
“More than 500 children came with their parents. They were separated at the border to dissuade them from coming,” said the Democratic candidate. “He makes a joke on us and violates all notions of who we are as a country.”
Credit, fake images
The policy of separating families from immigrants was a hallmark of the Trump administration
Trump defended himself by stating that the gigantic metal cells of the immigration detention centers in the United States were built during the Obama administration, of which Biden was vice president.
“They put a picture of one of those horrible cages in a newspaper and said ‘look at these cages, President Trump built them. They decided to build them in 2014. He did that,” Trump said.
Despite his anti-immigration rhetoric and a surge in arrests of undocumented immigrants within the country, the number of arrests and deportations during Trump’s first four years remains below the early terms of the Obama-Biden duo.
Asked about these record figures by the moderator of the debate, the former vice president acknowledged that he and Obama made “a mistake.”
In the shadow of Hunter Biden
Trump had already said that he would make Biden’s son Hunter a central issue in the presidential debate, and it wasn’t long before he spoke about the family of his rival and former vice president.
The Republican accused Biden of personally profiting from his son’s business in Ukraine and China, referring to information published by some media and allegedly based on data obtained from Hunter’s computer.
“If that’s true, then he’s a corrupt politician,” Trump said of the Democratic candidate.
Biden denied the veracity of that information and said there are 50 former US intelligence agents who say these charges are part of a Russian plan to undermine his candidacy.
Additionally, Biden responded by talking about Trump’s income tax returns and his business ties to China, citing an investigation by The New York Times that revealed that the president barely paid taxes in his country for years, but he did in the country. Asian.
This forced the president to waste time debating by explaining that he paid millions of dollars “upfront” in taxes and ensuring that he would publish his income tax return in the future, a common practice among politicians and presidents of the country, but that Trump did not do until time.
“Trump hoped to draw blood from his attacks on the Biden family, creating a controversy that would undermine the chances of his pollster, the leader of the polls, but it seems that tonight he did not achieve that goal,” said Anthony Zurcher, a specialist BBC journalist in American Politics.
The first polls conducted the night of the event with voters who watched the show suggest Biden’s victory over Trump. The YouGov Institute, for example, gave the Democrat a margin of 19 percentage points.
In practice, these polls indicate that the president does not seem to have managed to generate an event capable of shaking the structures of the electoral race.
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As is customary with Trump, during his speeches the US president used various slogans to discuss his proposals, but did not offer many details.
He said, for example, that there will be a vaccine against the coronavirus in a few weeks, but, when asked about the matter by the moderator Kristen Welker, of the television network NBC, did not give more details on the subject.
Trump also boasted that he is “the president who has done the most for blacks since Abraham Lincoln (the president who abolished slavery)” and that he is “the least racist person in this room.”
Credit, EPA
There was much anticipation about this debate for the first chaotic showdown between the candidates
“This ‘Abraham Lincoln’ we have here is one of the most racist presidents we have ever had in modern history. He pours gasoline on every one of the racist fires,” Biden responded sarcastically, recalling that Trump began his first presidential campaign by saying that would liberate the states. United for the “Mexican rapists.”
Biden, for his part, offered several details about his government plans, although his statements are not Trump’s bombastic tone.
He announced, for example, that if he reached the White House, he would send a law to Congress to create a citizenship grant program for 11 million undocumented immigrants and that he would improve the health system by establishing a public health insurance option that would generate more competition and lower costs. Biden also promised a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour (around R $ 84).
Compared to the first debate, this second and final meeting between Trump and Biden was much better received by the public.
“It was a more substantial debate,” said Laura Trevelyan, a reporter and presenter for the BBC in North America.
Part of this success is attributed to a technological innovation: the adoption of a button to mute the microphones of the participants at certain times so that each one had minutes of speech without interruption by the opponent.
“The silence button, or at least the threat of its use, seemed to work. During the second presidential debate, the candidates were more moderate,” said Anthony Zurcher of the BBC in North America.
Moderator Kristen Welker, who many Americans have hailed as the “clear winner” of the debate, also featured prominently in the audience.
Even Trump, who regularly criticizes the network of journalists (NBC) and accuses it of “terrible and unfair”, ended up praising Welker.
“I have to say that I respect the way he is conducting this here,” said the president in the middle of the last face-to-face meeting of this presidential campaign.
The public, on social media, seems to agree with him.
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