On the key issue of Covid, President Trump didn’t do himself any favors during Thursday’s debate.
During the debate Trump reached into his usual bag of tricks about the virus: He claimed his actions saved more than two million lives from the “China virus” and that a vaccine will be forthcoming “within weeks.”
Of course, that figure of more than two million deaths referred to a projection on mortality that would result from inaction—something no functional government would have allowed in the face of an onrushing pandemic. And, yes, the virus did originate in China, but it also came into the US from Europe and then it spread like wildfire inside the United States, all while the President mocked mask-wearing, which is the most effective tool against the virus.
During the debate Trump did not lay out any kind of real plan to mitigate the worst public health crisis in the United States in a century. If he had done so, he might have won over some undecided voters, but he seems incapable of doing so.
Scott Jennings: Trump delivers the performance he needed
Main takeaways tonight: Republicans are reassured by President Trump’s performance, by far his best night of the campaign. Vice President Joe Biden belittled and attacked the left flank of his party on health care when, after Trump said that Biden’s embrace of the public option would destroy Medicare, Biden responded “He thinks he’s running against somebody else. He’s running against Joe Biden. I beat all those other people I because I disagree with them”—meaning Biden’s primary opponents from Democrats’ progressive wing, which isn’t all that thrilled with him in the first place.
And Trump finally—finally—had a conversation on issues and policy choices, which he clearly won. On energy issues, health care, the economy, criminal justice reform and more, Trump rang the bells that conservatives have been waiting for.
It was astonishing to see a completely different Trump on the stage, patiently waiting for Biden to finish answers and teeing up his own policy ideas and attacks. In the first debate, Trump never let Biden speak. And tonight, whether due to self-control or the muted mics, Trump let Biden unspool and then turned almost every exchange into a winning policy argument. When he was pounding the drum for reopening schools, for instance, I can imagine a great many moms and dads out there were pumping their fists right along with the President.
It is what Trump always needed: A choice on issues instead of a referendum on himself.
Unfortunately for Trump, this winning debate comes awfully late. Will it make a difference? Millions have voted already, and most everyone else has made up their minds. But I suspect senior citizens who usually vote Republican would’ve appreciated Trump’s performance, college educated men in the suburbs will think Trump won, and I doubt many progressives were inspired by Biden’s boasting of own healthcare plan.
I wonder what might’ve been had Trump turned in this performance in the first debate instead of the last. A “Never Trump” friend of mine texted me: “I hate him, but he was the clear winner.”
Roxanne Jones: The mute button won, and so did Joe Biden
The mute button worked — and Americans won.
The final presidential debate Thursday night in Nashville, Tennessee, was a refreshing respite from the childlike shouting match that we witnessed the last time President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden squared off.
NBC anchor and moderator Kristen Welker delivered sharp questions for both candidates and forced Trump to actually debate the issues.
With soaring unemployment rates and a raging pandemic that’s killed nearly 220,000 people and no quick vaccine around the corner—if you listen to the scientists—there was a sense both candidates realized that time for fun and games was up, mostly.
Trump couldn’t resist some bad habits. It was devastating to hear the President’s callous reply after Welker informed him that 16,000 Americans had died since the last presidential debate, and another 40,000 people were in hospitals across the nation as the debate aired.
“We have a vaccine that’s coming. It’s ready. It’s going to be announced within weeks,”, Trump boasted. Talking about his own recent bout with Covid-19, he added, “I was in the hospital. I had it … I got better very fast or I wouldn’t be here tonight. And now they say I’m immune.”
As someone who has lost loved ones to the virus, the president’s words felt disrespectful. Imagine how many of those 220,000 lives may have been saved if those Americans had “Trump-care:” completely free, top quality medical care, helicopter ambulances to the hospital, the best team of medical doctors around the clock, and a private wing at the hospital.
Trump lost me right there and I’m betting millions of other Americans, too. I give the night to Biden with Kristen Welker coming in a close second.
Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has been a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD.
SE Cupp: Biden channeled our horror over Trump’s disastrous child-separation policy
Tonight Joe Biden reminded America what compassion and decency looks like.
While President Donald Trump attempted to smear Biden’s family and raise conspiracy theories about his finances, Biden continually turned the questions on the issues away from his family and toward American families.
Voters don’t care about Biden’s son, or Wall Street fundraisers, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They care about keeping their families alive and safe from Covid and staying employed. Biden won the night for staying focused on the issues that matter most.
To me, the most affecting moment of the night was when Biden emotionally responded to Trump’s horrific child-separation policy at our borders, a policy that has literally lost the parents of hundreds of detained children, with officials unable now to reunite families. His horror is our horror, and I’d bet that for suburban women, that really resonated.
Keith Boykin: About that Abraham Lincoln thing
To accept what President Donald Trump said at Thursday night’s debate would require what the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once called a “willing suspension of disbelief.”
Trump revised history to create an entirely fictional universe of misinformation on a number of issues, but nowhere was this more insidious than on the subject of race.
“Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump,” he claimed, with the exception of maybe Abraham Lincoln. Of course, he entirely ignored Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
“I am the least racist person in this room,” Trump also said. Never mind the Black journalist, Kristen Welker, who moderated the debate.
Trump has a decades-long history of racism, including the full-page ad he took out against the Central Park Five, five innocent Black boys falsely accused of assault and rape, and I wish Joe Biden would have spent more time reciting all of these instances (not just the Central Park one).
In contrast, Biden served his country under the first Black president at the same time Trump was leading a racist campaign challenging Barack Obama’s birth certificate (a false claim Trump would only stand down from years later).
Some low-information voters may not know Trump’s history, and he purposefully tried to muddy the waters. But with over 45 million votes already cast in the 2020 election, the pool of persuadable voters is shrinking. That means Biden won the debate.
Keith Boykin is a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton and a CNN political commentator.
Nayyera Haq: Trump played the old hits
Trump played this debate just like he did the ones in 2016, going on the attack and tossing red meat to his base. The problem is that this time around, he’s been President for four years and has no defense for his performance on the coronavirus crisis and the post-pandemic economy.
In the face of the crisis facing American families right now, Trump didn’t offer a plan or even words of comfort. Instead, he offered… a joke? It’s unclear why he decided to say he was kidding about injecting bleach during a segment about saving lives, but he was very serious when he derided Biden for talking about families around the kitchen table. After this debate, Biden is the candidate viewers can believe actually understands the importance of family moments like dinnertime and can be a President who will take care of all of us like he would his own.
David Gergen: Biden remains a strong and steady favorite
The final presidential debate, like most finales in the past, probably did little to change the dynamics of the campaign — but did solidify existing support for each of the candidates.
President Donald Trump’s fans can obviously take encouragement: he was significantly better than in the first debate mash-up. For the first half hour, especially, he was on reasonably good behavior, and Joe Biden seemed flat in contrast.
Biden picked up more steam as the night went on, but as he shrugged off Trump’s attacks, he left an overall impression that he really didn’t want a fight. His supporters will say that was smart — he is ahead and didn’t want to rock the boat. Trump’s supporters will insist that was a sign of weakness.
Bottom line: Biden and Trump are coming down the homestretch, with Biden still two lengths ahead. Trump supporters can legitimately take heart after this final debate, but Biden remains a strong and steady favorite.
David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he founded the Center for Public Leadership.
Jessica Anderson: Trump convinced, Biden did not
Tonight, we saw the return of Trump the challenger. The President was able to remind Americans that former Vice President Joe Biden can be seen almost as a virtual “incumbent,” as opposed to Trump, who was elected as a DC outsider.
Trump and Biden provided answers on foreign policy, Covid-19 policies, and immigration. But the big takeaway was the difference in the economy: Trump talked about growing the economy during Covid while Biden wouldn’t rule out shutting it down when cases flare. He described regulating it and taking measures that The Heritage Foundation has found would drive up prices, like stringent regulations on conventional fuels and restrictions on their development.
Biden didn’t provide persuasive answers when asked repeatedly why he didn’t take action on his lofty goals throughout his nearly half a century in office. And when asked why he didn’t enact criminal justice reform during that time, he paused before blaming Republicans: “We had a Republican Congress. That’s your answer.”
President Trump was on message, composed and clear. This matters to swing voters who are looking at style just as much as substance. Swing voters are likely to approve of his message on opening society, on the economy and criminal justice.
Overall, Trump gave a convincing performance and stood by his record. Even after four years in Washington, he was able to remind voters he is the disrupter draining the swamp and fixing the failings of the Obama-Biden administration. For those on the fence, President Trump made a case for their vote.
Raul Reyes: Trump failed his two most important tasks
Former Vice President Joe Biden was the winner of Thursday’s debate because he stayed focused on what matters to the American people, and he did not allow himself to be thrown off track by President Donald Trump’s accusations and interruptions.
Biden gave thoughtful responses to questions about race, climate change and leadership. But he was no pushover either. In response to Trump’s incessant questions about his family’s alleged corruption, Biden stated, “Release your tax returns or stop talking about corruption.”
In contrast, Trump failed his two most important tasks tonight: He did not offer an affirmative vision for his second term, and he could not articulate a coherent response to the coronavirus pandemic. He wasted time with wild assertions, such as his having done more for African Americans than any other president since Abraham Lincoln, and his claim that he was the least racist person in the debate hall. No wonder polls show Trump lagging in national and battleground states — his narcissist act is getting old. This was Trump’s last big chance to make his case with voters, and he did not close the deal.
After two debates with no mention of immigration, credit goes to moderator Kirsten Welker for bringing up the 545 migrant children whose parents cannot be located after they were separated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. Trump said the kids “are so well taken care of” and that they are “in facilities that are so clean.” This is not true. There have been numerous reports, including from the Department of Homeland Security’s own Inspector General, about the dangerous conditions in immigration detention.
Despite prodding from Welker, Trump never explained how he would reunite these children with their families. At a time where the election and Covid-19 are dominating the headlines, this was an important reminder that the heartbreaking consequences of the zero tolerance policy still continue.
Sarah Isgur: What the debate didn’t show
For the first time in this election, voters on Thursday night were able to hear their presidential candidates answer questions about how they would lead the country through the pandemic and reform healthcare to increase access and affordability. And one thing became remarkably clear: neither of these guys were able to articulate any plan to move the country forward.
But let’s be honest with ourselves. This election has never been about the issues. Rather, it’s been about the candidates themselves.
In a normal election year, this kind of flailing debate might depress turnout. But so far, we’ve seen unprecedented enthusiasm from voters. Echelon Insights estimates that over 157 million Americans may vote this time around—20 million more than 2016. Already more than 40 million voters have cast their ballots by mail or in-person, which represents almost 30% of the ballots cast in the 2016 election.
Furthermore, seven million first time voters have cast a ballot–2.5 times more than at this same point in 2016. And, three out of four voters say they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting this year–a shocking 20% increase when compared to the previous election.
This means voters believe this election matters and that–for better or worse–a Biden presidency will be fundamentally different than a Trump second term. But this debate did very little to elucidate what those differences will actually mean come January 20, 2021.
Sarah Isgur is a CNN political analyst. She is a staff writer at The Dispatch and an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. She previously worked on three Republican presidential campaigns and graduated from Harvard Law School.
Tara Setmayer: Trump lost the chance to save his campaign
Coming into the final debate, President Donald Trump needed to do something to change the downward trajectory of his campaign. He didn’t. We saw the same dishonest, conspiracy peddling, racially insensitive, intransigent Trump, just slightly less obnoxious than his prior debate performances.
Trump doesn’t deserve a gold star for being more well-behaved than an unruly child this time around. That shouldn’t be the standard for a president of the United States.
As Covid-19 rages on with no end in sight and more Americans are sick and dying, Trump’s answers on how to address the ongoing pandemic were still incredibly cavalier and tone deaf. Continuing to blame China for his failed Covid-19 response is not a winning message.
This election is a clear referendum on Trump, and Vice President Joe Biden knows it. He smartly seized the opportunity to remind the American people that Trump’s ineptitude is to blame for the crises the country now faces.
Biden didn’t allow Trump’s unsubstantiated attacks against him and his family to rattle him and effectively landed counterpunches of his own, on Trump’s lack of transparency about his taxes, foreign dealings, immigration cruelties and absence of a health care plan.
In his closing argument, Biden eloquently summed up the choice facing the American people when he said, character, decency, honor and respect were on the ballot. On November 3rd, we’ll find out if those things do in fact, still matter. For the sake of our democracy, I hope they do.
Aaron David Miller: Without yelling and interruptions, we could actually hear the absurdity of Trump’s views
I tweeted before tonight’s debate that the odds of a more moderate reasonable Donald Trump showing up was about as favorable as the chance of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. I was wrong. A much more controlled Trump did in fact show up. And indeed, tonight we actually did have something that resembled a real debate.
Biden won, in part, paradoxically, because in the absence of the yelling and interrupting during the first debate — mostly on Trump’s part — we could actually listen to Trump’s arguments and hear how untethered they were from reality. In contrast, on most issues, Biden simply made a lot more sense winning rounds on points, character and compassion.
Far from running out the clock, Biden was focused, strong, risk ready — hammering and targeting Trump for his racism, abdication of leadership on Covid-19, immigrant children being separated from their parents and lack of a health care policy.
Trump’s talking points were old and stale, targeting his base and not expanding it to reach out to independents who at this late stage might still be undecided.
Biden on several critical issues, especially race and Covid-19, squared himself to the camera and talked directly to the American public with empathy and compassion. Trump never did, partly because he lacks the capacity to do so.
Trump went to the gutter quickly — launching charges based on unsubstantiated emails that Biden and family were enriching themselves from foreign countries and donors. Biden countered by hammering Trump on tax returns and his reported China bank account; but stayed out of the sewer by not making an issue of Trump’s family.
After four years, Donald Trump demonstrated he could control his temper. Joe Biden demonstrated he could be President.
Frida Ghitis: Less noisy, but just as ugly
President Donald Trump controlled himself, and still he showed us who he is.
Sure, he didn’t scream over everyone and interrupt constantly, as he did at the last debate. So, he cleared the lowest bar imaginable after having set the lowest expectations possible. But if he had been any other politician, we would be astonished at the unfathomable number of lies he told, the indefensible actions he defended and the preposterous statements he made.
From his first words about the pandemic, when he misleadingly tried to suggest he saved more than 2 million lives from coronavirus, Trump started lying to the American people. According to CNN’s fact checker Daniel Dale, he lied even more this time than at the first debate, an almost impossible feat. Trump’s strategy consisted of misrepresenting his own record and lying about Biden’s plans, falsely claiming that his Democratic opponent would ban fracking and socialize health care, and then slandering Biden and his family. If we weren’t used to this, we could hardly believe it.
Biden had a strong performance on many issues, from health care to immigration. Trump again said he’d have a great plan on health care, as he has been saying since 2015. Biden gave convincing details about his “Bidencare” proposal. But Biden was at his best when he was visibly incensed, infuriated, as were probably most Americans, hearing Trump defend his policy of taking children away from their parents at the border, a moral stain on America that will never completely wash away. Trump’s callous response, “they’re so well take care of.”
Biden needed to avoid making any mistakes. Trump needed to turn the race around. Biden did what he needed to. Trump did not.
Paul Begala: Scranton just kicked Park Avenue’s butt
If, as I suspect, Joe Biden’s strategy was to frame the race as (in his words) “Scranton versus Park Avenue,” he succeeded.
Biden remained focused on the middle class and had his best moment when he invoked middle class families sitting around the kitchen table, worried about how they can pay for a new set of tires and still afford the tuition at community college. The former Vice President spoke with compassion and conviction. Then it was President Donald Trump’s turn. Instead of feeling the pain of the middle class, the trust fund brat sneered at Biden for caring about them.
The man is a political sociopath. Trump showed no empathy for the more than 220,000 Americans dead from Covid-19. No empathy for immigrant children who were ripped from their parents and now cannot be reunited. No empathy for African American parents who have the talk with their teenage children because of disproportionate police brutality. He used every answer to brag about himself, not to feel your pain.
Trump is too deep into the right-wing media bubble, spewing absurd and untrue attacks about Biden and his family. Unless you’re someone who checks far-right media outlets every five minutes, he seemed disconnected from reality. In 11 days, reality is going to assert itself powerfully. There are a lot more people in towns like Scranton than on Park Avenue.
Van Jones: Trump’s best wasn’t good enough
President Donald Trump did his best, and it was not good enough. It was the same message delivered at a significantly lower volume. But there was no plan for the next four years and no apology for his failures — just a lot of attacks on his opponent, Joe Biden.
The problem is that Trump is standing on the graves of almost a quarter of a million Americans who have died of Covid-19 under his watch with seemingly no regrets looking backward, and no concrete health care plan for moving forward.
No president who is proud of his last four years of leadership would bring up Hunter Biden and allegations of wrongdoing. He would use his debate time to talk about his own accomplishments. But instead, this President, who has presided over a failed pandemic response, wasted time at the debate attacking Biden — a man few people think is corrupt and even fewer think is actually a bad person — and his family.
Van Jones, a CNN host, is the CEO of the REFORM Alliance, a criminal justice organization.
Julian Zelizer: A debate that didn’t change the race
President Donald Trump is a weak incumbent. Former Vice President Joe Biden is a strong opponent. After Thursday night’s debate, that is the bottom line.
Trump’s goal in the debate was to undermine Biden’s popularity and high approval ratings reflected in the latest polls. That’s what he did to Hillary Clinton. So far, it has been more difficult with the former Vice President. It’s not clear that Trump made any progress on this front even when bringing up Hunter Biden. On the other hand, Biden held firm and was able to offer a relatively strong performance. Though it wasn’t a dramatic “win,” and Trump was more restrained than in the first debate, tonight was probably enough to keep the horse race status quo—which automatically helps Biden.
In the end, however, the debates won’t be nearly as important as voter turnout, disenfranchisement, intimidation and processing absentee ballots. These were the issues at the heart of the election before this debate and all of this remains the same after the debate. This is why Democrats are still very nervous despite Biden’s double-digits lead in the polls. They simply don’t know how this will play out when it comes to actual voting. Those are rational fears.
Once Americans turn off their television sets and shut down their smartphones, the ground game and the struggle to protect the decisions of voters will determine which way this election goes.
Alice Stewart: After a disciplined debate, voters were the only winners
In a year where everything is surreal and abnormal, it’s refreshing to get back to a real and normal presidential debate. With more discipline and less interruptions, the winner of the faceoff in Nashville was without a doubt: the voters.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden made calculations on how to frame their closing arguments; one around accomplishments and the other about character.
Trump successfully made the case that Biden has a long record of accomplishing very little. Arguing that Biden is “all talk and no action, just like a politician.” Trump went on to say that the inaction of the Obama-Biden administration is what led him to run for president.
As is often the case, Biden had some of his strongest moments when he made a direct appeal to the camera — to the American people. He said, “the character of the country is at stake.”
Aside from a few quick glances at his watch as if he had somewhere else to be, Biden connected with viewers. He showed empathy and compassion.
Biden did well in responding to Trump’s allegations about Hunter Biden’s business ventures and whether or not he profited off of them. The former Vice President vehemently denied the allegations and pivoted to President Trump’s failure to release his tax returns.
More than 40 million people have already cast their ballots and there are no signs of the enthusiasm slowing down. The question for the remaining voters is not as much about “are you better off today than you were four years ago,” it’s who will make you better four years from now?
Alice Stewart is a CNN political commentator, fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University, and former communications director for Ted Cruz for President.
John Sutter: Don’t let Trump fool you on climate change
Did you know carbon emissions can stick around in the atmosphere and oceans for 1,000 years? The pollution we’re putting into the atmosphere today matters for that long.
I kept thinking about that as I listened to President Donald Trump make every attempt on Thursday to distract voters from the core truth of this race: Biden may not be a rock-star environmentalist, but he takes the climate crisis seriously and has an actual plan to reduce US fossil fuel pollution.
Trump, meanwhile, used media catnip — small windows! bird-killing windmills! planting trees! — in an attempt to distract voters from the fact that his policies are a disaster for the Earth and its future. That’s a long-established tactic of the fossil fuel industry. Distract, obfuscate, confuse. Don’t let it work on you.
Trump supports fossil fuels. He denies the essential and well-established realities of climate science. His record on the environment is abhorrent. He can talk about beautiful water and sparkly air all he damn well pleases. It doesn’t change things.
This election will matter to your great-great-great-great grandchildren because it is an election about the climate emergency. And the chasm between the candidates could not be wider.
Lanhee Chen: Trump landed enough punches to build some momentum
President Donald Trump closed well in 2016, and Thursday’s debate may herald the start of a strong closing push for him in this year’s campaign. The President was, for the most part, much more disciplined and on-message than he has been at any point in the last few weeks — and certainly much more so than in the first debate. In a “change” election, like 2020 is shaping up to be, Trump managed to embrace the mantle of the disruptor again, even though he’s the incumbent president. His indictment of Biden as a politician who’s been in office for 47 years but accomplished little during that time continued to be his most effective sustained line of attack.
Also impactful was Trump’s effort to paint Biden as an extreme liberal on climate and energy issues. The exchange the two had on fracking and, separately, on how each would deal with the future of fossil fuel use, reflect where the modern Democratic Party may be out of touch with many voters in parts of the country where the extraction economy remains significant. More than a policy debate, these exchanges could have electoral consequences in crucial battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Trump did what he needed to do tonight. It wasn’t a perfect debate, but he landed enough punches to give himself some momentum going into the final sprint to Election Day.
Lanhee J. Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and Director of Domestic Policy Studies in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University. He served as policy director to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and senior adviser to Marco Rubio’s campaign in 2016.
