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CLEVELAND: Donald Trump has long mocked his Democratic rival as “Sleepy Joe” Biden, but the president of the United States received a rude awakening and a strong pushback in Tuesday’s debate by a candidate he managed to hold off to an outraged headline.
“Clown”. “Liar”. “Fool”. “Racist”. “Putin’s puppy.”
Biden’s weighted assaults, even as he sought to stay above the fray, made it clear that the Democratic challenger was not going to back down when the two rivals engaged in a verbal brawl the likes of which American voters have not seen on stage at the modern debate.
Trump and Biden politely nodded to each other at first. But from Fox News moderator Chris Wallace’s initial question, the tension was unmistakable and the showdown quickly spiraled out of control.
With Trump refusing to outright condemn white supremacy, insisting that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, attacking Biden’s son Hunter, and warning that a Biden presidency would sink the economy, Biden finally blurted out: “You are the worst president than the United States. United has had. “
The interruptions became so frequent that Biden finally lashed out, “Shut up, man!”
It was the closest Biden came to losing his cool, something Trump was clearly trying to goad him into doing as they paused on issues of the Supreme Court vacancy that Trump intends to quickly fill from the coronavirus pandemic, problems. economic and mail integrity. on ballots.
But the line clearly resonated in living rooms across America, and Biden’s tent immediately began selling “Will You Shut Up, Man” t-shirts.
Between 10 pm and 11 pm, the campaign read, “Biden for President had its best online fundraising hour of all time.”
Trump tried to criticize Biden as a weak candidate who would only be dragged to the left by “radical” socialists in the party, but Biden stood his ground.
“Everything he’s saying so far is just a lie,” Biden told viewers just minutes later, a refrain he repeated often throughout the night.
“We have become weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided and more violent” under Trump.
When the president insisted that governors praised him for doing a “phenomenal” job in addressing Covid-19, and that Biden would have let millions of Americans die, Biden looked directly into the camera, one of several times he did. , in an apparent appeal to undecided voters.
“The president has no plans … he knew since February how serious this crisis was,” Biden said.
“He said he didn’t tell us or give people a warning, because he didn’t want to scare the American people. Don’t panic, he panicked. “
President ‘smug’
Polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, a potentially decisive electoral issue, especially in swing states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that Biden aims to win back after Trump won them in 2016.
And in an appeal to middle-class and blue-collar voters, Biden lashed out at Trump for paying little to no federal income tax over the past few years despite bragging about being a billionaire.
“They look down on people like Irish Catholics and me,” Biden said.
“And people who don’t have money.”
Trump offered a vigorous defense of his “law and order” approach of recent months, saying that Biden lacks the backbone to deal with violent protesters as the president does.
“If he ever came to rule the country and they did it the way he wants, we would have suburbs (that) disappear, and you would see problems like you’ve never seen them before,” Trump said.
“I wouldn’t recognize a suburb unless it took a wrong turn,” Biden replied.
Mitchell McKinney, a specialist in presidential debates at the University of Missouri, told AFP that Trump’s performance cast him as a “smug” president who seeks to mock and mock his rival.
“Joe Biden avoided any major mistakes or missteps tonight that would fuel Trump’s narrative that Biden is too old or unfit to serve as president.”
