Your two minute summary of the first U.S. Presidential Debate
Key insights from The Daily Aus:
This was not America's finest hour.
The basic processes that have held up presidential debates throughout U.S. history appeared to falter, as the two candidates interrupted each other constantly.
The general sentiment on social media from American commentators on both sides of politics was one of great disappointment.
We didn't even find out that much about Joe Biden's plan for America - the overwhelming barrage of personal insults, conspiracy theories and irrelevant questions confused Trump, Biden, moderator Chris Wallace and the audience.
On COVID-19
Joe Biden: The President has no plan. He hasn’t laid out anything. He knew all the way back in February how serious this crisis was…. He said he didn’t tell us or give people a warning of it because he didn’t want to panic the American people. You don’t panic. He panicked.
Donald Trump: When you talk about numbers, you don’t know how many people died in China. You don’t know how many people died in Russia. You don’t know how many people died in India… if you look at what we’ve done, I closed [the borders] and you said he’s xenophobic, he’s a racist.
On race and law enforcement
Joe Biden: This a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division… Look, what I support is the police having the opportunity to deal with the problems they face. And I’m totally opposed to defunding the police officers.
Donald Trump: You can’t even say the word ‘law enforcement’ because if you did say those words you would lose all of your radical left supporters. Why aren’t you saying those words, Joe?
On climate change
Donald Trump: I want crystal clean water and air, I want beautiful clean air. We have now the lowest carbon... If you look at our numbers right now we are doing phenomenally, but I haven’t destroyed our businesses.
Joe Biden: We can create hard, hard, good jobs by making sure the environment is clean and we are all in better shape. We spent billions of dollars on floods, hurricanes and rising seas. We are in real trouble.
On the economy
Donald Trump: What happened is we closed it down and we’re doing record business. We had 10.4 million people in a four-month period that we’ve put back into the workforce - a record, the likes of which nobody has seen before.
Joe Biden: The difference is the millionaires and billionaires like him, in the middle of the COVID crisis, have done very well… But you folks at home, you in Cleveland, and Scranton and all the working class suburbs in America, how are you doing?
On election integrity
Donald Trump: I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully… If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated I can’t go along with that.
Joe Biden: Some of these ballots in some states can’t even be opened until election day and if there’s thousands of ballots it’s gonna take time to do it. And by the way, our military, they’ve been voting by ballots since the end of the Civil War… Why is it for them somehow not fraudulent?