2020 Presidential Debate
President Donald Trump and Joe Biden
September 29th, 2020, the first presidential debate between current president Donald Trump and former vice president, also running candidate, Joe Biden took place over live television for all to view and be informed on their upcoming plans for the country. For myself, and many others, its fair to describe this presidential debate as simply just a chaotic series of bitter exchanges and name-calling, and not really a settling debate whatsoever.
This debate I would say is one that will go down in the books for years to come. There was plenty of insluts that came from both parties also including many ineruptions that made it hard for both to talk. The whole point of this debate is for both candidates to be able to explain and justify why they are suited for president, and after two hours of debating, we can all agree we did not get the answers we all wanted. To start off this debate, they were hit hard with the popular and most important topic today of COVID-19. The country wants answers and updates with whats to happen, especially with the virus continuing to spread by the day. The question asked to the candidates by anchor Chris Wallace was, “ Why should Americans trust you more on dealing with COVID-19”? Right off the bat, Joe Biden shoots with the first detail of Trump already knowing about the virus months before it started to wildfire around the country, yet did nothing to prepare, but instead kept the secret from everyone. Trump returns with exclaiming how Joe Biden did with the swine flu a couple years back, thought it cannot compare to the deaths being suffered now. Biden was able to backup his statement with statiscics where as with Trump it felt like he continiously just wanted to attack what Biden had done. To me, it was insane how many little side comments and facial expressions were used by even both candidates throught the whole debate. Especially because we are all supposed to be able to trust what one of these men has in store for our country, yet we can’t even take them serious.
With the huge issue of COVID-19, there comes the issue of wearing masks. President Trump made it very clear on this stance on masks and his opinion on wearing them. He says, “I wear a mask when needed”. For being president of the United States, he is a role model for the whole country. Across the United States mask mandates are required everywhere with some states having more restrictions than others. During the debate it almost felt as if President Trump was mocking the idea of masks. He even pointed at Biden and said, “I don’t wear a mask like him, everytime you see him, 200 feet away you see him with the biggest mask you’ve ever seen”. As for Biden, President Trump saying that is great for him showing that Biden cares about this pandemic and will follow the rules indicated from the CDC and as a running candidate for president he is being a great example. With Trump not caring about the usage of masks it says a lot about our president and his caring about the pandemic.
Overall, this well wanted debate definitely did not turn out the way any of us imagined. For the next debate, each candidate definitely have to improve to put on a good image for who is most suitable. The insulting, will definitely have to end and bringing the deaths up of others was also not in any way okay to do. Speaking over eachother and not letting eachother talk for their alloted two minutes did not help either of them. For the next debate, the idea of cutting out the microphones for each candidate is definitely something that should go into play to minimize problems. There is a lot of improvement needed for the next debate to come.
