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A little over a month before the US presidential election, the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was marked by an exchange of personal insults: “There is nothing smart about you, Joe,” the president said of the Democratic opponent , who in turn even dubbed the Republican a “clown” and told him to shut up.
At the political level, the face-to-face did not contribute anything new, with each candidate defending their truth on issues such as the economy, the coronavirus or the elections themselves, with statements that do not pass the verification of the facts.
economy
Trump repeated what he says for years: that his Administration “built the greatest economy in history.” But this statement does not take into account the crisis that the pandemic has created, with millions of Americans falling into unemployment.
After unemployment hit a record low of 3.5% in December, the Employment Department said in January (even before COVID-19 hit the U.S.) that job growth was slower in the U.S. first three years of the presidency. of Trump. Only 6.5 million jobs were created and in the previous three years, even with Barack Obama in the White House, eight million had been created.
The pandemic brought unemployment to 14.7% in April, and figures for August already show an improvement, to 8.4%.
In terms of economic growth, another indicator of the strength of the US economy, Trump achieved 3% GDP growth in 2018, his best year. Obama had reached 3.1% in 2015 and George W. Bush, before him, reached 3.8% in 2004.
However, Trump hit record highs on the stock market, with the index hitting 29,551.42 points on February 12, but about a month later (due to the pandemic) the Dow Jones was already at the worst records in more than one of each. Nos 19 173.98. Meanwhile it has recovered to 27,452.76 this Tuesday.
Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, said in the debate that the previous administration left Trump as a growing economy and that he caused the recession. An exaggeration by the Democrat, since neither the economy was in such good health when Trump arrived at the White House nor was the Republican responsible for the poor economic figures that the pandemic caused.
But Biden also lied when he claimed that the president did nothing to help small businesses. Even during the pandemic, Trump signed the $ 2.3 billion aid package that created the wage protection program that included $ 525 billion for non-repayable loans to more than five million small businesses. However, 130 billion were never used.
The former vice president also claimed that the United States has a larger trade deficit with China than before, but China has fallen sharply in recent years.
Taxes
The president insisted on the idea that he paid “millions of dollars” in taxes, despite the investigation by the The New York Times you have shown that you did not. However, he also made it clear that like any citizen, he “does not want to pay taxes” and seeks all forms of deduction to reduce what he pays.
Pressured by Biden to present evidence, Trump said “you’ll see”; He has said in the past that he would publish tax returns and never did.
Coronavirus
The president said the United States is “weeks away from having a vaccine” against covid-19, but American experts say there is very little chance that it will be approved by the end of October, believing that by November or December the country will know if has a safe and effective vaccine and that only by April there should be enough doses for everyone.
Trump further claimed that Biden will “shut down the entire country” due to the pandemic, and the Democrat said he will listen to scientists.
For his part, the Democrat affirmed that Trump devalued the pandemic, something that the president himself confirmed in interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, saying that he knew that the virus was dangerous and more deadly than the common flu but that he wanted to devalue it because he did not want to ( and still) doesn’t want to) create panic.
Trump also accused Biden of being “a disaster” during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, but the vice president was not responsible for the federal response in this case and the Obama Administration also responded more quickly after the first case was detected in the United States. . United States: Around 12,500 people would die, compared to more than 200,000 already registered in the covid-19 pandemic.
Elections
Trump argued that voting by mail will lead to “fraud the likes of which we have never seen,” exaggerating in several examples he gave, while Biden said that “no one has been able to prove that there is fraud related to vote-by-mail.”
Experts agree with the Democrat, with some even saying that an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit vote-by-mail fraud. In Oregon, which has been voting by mail for two decades, there were 54 cases of possible fraud in the 2016 presidential election, with 22 people convicted of voting in two states.
The president argues that in cases where the voter is asked to vote because he is absent (he does so) there are no problems, but that sending ballots to all voters (as is the case in several states) is fraud. This year, due to the pandemic, more states are sending the ballot to voters, who can return by mail or by mail at predetermined locations.
Violence
Regarding the protests that have taken place in several American cities, sometimes related to racial issues, Trump said that the sheriff of Portland (where the protesters have confronted the police, who have responded to the attacks with tear gas and rubber bullets ) supports it. He went on to say on Twitter that this is false.
But Biden also claimed that, during a peaceful protest in front of the White House, the president “came out of his bunker and put the military on tear gas,” but there are not only indications that Trump was taken to the bunker that exists in building. how the police used this mechanism to expel protesters on June 1.
Supreme Court
Biden claimed that Trump’s proposed Supreme Court judge, instead of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, considers Obamacare to be unconstitutional. However, Amy Coney Barrett never said that, despite being critical of the federal law passed during the Obama presidency and the court decisions that support it.
It is the Trump Administration that is asking the Supreme Court (which will hear the case on November 10) to deem Obamacare unconstitutional.
