Salt Lake City TV Debate: “Kamala Harris is not black at all, she’s only one-eighth black”

me“Doug,” as he calls himself, wears a white suit with narrow black stripes, a black and white checkered tie, a hat, sunglasses, and a green feather boa around his neck. Across from the University of Utah, he sat in a folding chair Wednesday at lunchtime. “Native Americans for Trump” is written on his self-painted banner. “I’m demonstrating here against Kamala Harris,” says Doug, 63, a fireworks shop owner.

“Malicious” is Harris. He wanted to allow late-term abortions until the last minute before birth, lawlessness, higher taxes, more money for the lazy. “Socialism”, then, says “Doug.” Also, “Harris is not black at all, just an eighth black. So she is as black as she is Irish. ” Harris’s parents immigrated to the United States from Jamaica and India.

It appears “Doug” has already approved his verdict before the first and only televised debate between Harris and Vice President Mike Pence takes place behind the massive fence and the stern-looking cops that night. Doug talks a lot about Harris. Pence, on the other hand, has to be talked about. He’s a “gentleman,” he says when asked. Pence follows the word of Jesus Christ, is his tight-lipped comment.

There is a lot of talk about Jesus in Utah, a particularly conservative and heavily Republican state. More than 50 percent of its residents are Mormons, members of the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ, including “Doug.” Salt Lake City is the spiritual center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which includes a huge temple, the tabernacle, churches, a convention center, etc.

Andrea Mabey has also come to the university grounds to demonstrate. He even carries a banner with a portrait of Jesus with him. “I was a stranger and you built a wall,” he says.

Mabey is from Wellsville, an hour north of Salt Lake City, and is angered by the Trump administration’s handling of migrants. “You are violating the Christian values ​​on which this nation was founded,” says Mabey. “The government has jailed people even though they have not committed any crime. She ignores the fact that her asylum grounds are well founded. ” But Mabey is particularly angry about one thing, namely the situation on the Mexican border. There the government separates refugee children from their parents: “That is inhuman and unfair. This is not how you treat other people. “

It seems Utah is not an easy place for either Kamala Harris or Mike Pence. Meetings with ordinary citizens are not intended for any of them. You have to imagine the debate at Kingsbury Hall, a theater on the university campus, as a kind of spaceship: extensively shielded, inaccessible to citizens, and with far fewer journalists than the 2,000 journalists who were there before the Covid crisis. had waited.

Only a few students can follow the discussion, they have been selected in advance. There is a heated debate in Salt Lake City about whether the cost of six million dollars is money properly invested. The local Chamber of Commerce is very optimistic about a 13 times higher long-term return on investment.

Pence and Harris have been in Salt Lake City for several days, apparently using a lot of time to prepare. Pence arrived Monday night with the opulent column of vice presidents and stayed at the strictly secured Hotel “Monaco.”

Reading the “Salt Lake Tribune,” the local newspaper, on Tuesday is unlikely to have pleased you. According to a poll, Donald Trump in Utah has just 50 percent, his Democratic challenger Joe Biden a respectable 40 percent. Yet in more than half a century, no Democratic presidential candidate in Utah has won 40 percent or more, Pence could read. Certainly, Utah will be able to vote for Trump in the end. But what does it mean when the president is only ten percentage points ahead of Biden in this state?

Pence’s team dealt with the independent organizers of the television debates until shortly before the debate began. Pence (part-time job: head of the anti-corona task force in the White House) rejected the installation of a plexiglass wall made of protection against Covid. On Tuesday he agreed. Pence and Harris are supposed to sit ten feet apart. Harris was at that distance from the beginning.

Rightly so: Pence attended the presentation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on Sept. 26 in the White House’s Rose Garden. Since then, this event turned out to be a Corona Superspreader event. At least ten participants have tested positive for Corona.

Certainly, there should be talk about Corona in Salt Lake City, and especially about the president’s handling of the infection.