Extension of ‘un-presidential’ debate from 2016 to 2020
Compared to the first clash between the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump in 2016, the first debate for the presidential election 2020 last night has shown even more pugnacious interruptions and personal attacks.
The last night’s clash between the two candidates addressed almost all hot topics covered these few months of the election, ranging from Supreme Court, coronavirus, taxes, racism, climate change, economy and the legitimation of the incoming ballots.
Biden attacked Trump mostly on his record of COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare policy, emphasizing that Trump “is the worst president America has ever had” and “does not have a plan” to do what he had said. Meanwhile, Trump insisted on his claim that Biden “could have done it” during the Democratic nominee’s 47-year period in government, but nothing had happened.
Before the debate, people were interested to see whether Trump’s attitude toward a male presidential candidate would change.
Trump’s team told CNBC ahead of the debate that “Joe Biden is a master debater who knows what he’s doing,” which Bob Drummond, former senior writer at Bloomberg News, commented that Trump’s strategy was to “set your own expectations low and your opponent’s expectations high so that you have a low bar to get over.”
Indeed, from the very beginning, Trump disoriented his opponent by hurling a volley of personal attacks and constantly talking over the former Vice President, which led Biden to remark Trump as “so un-presidential.”
The debate turned out that Biden repeatedly lost his train of thought and displayed fragmented points of view, which somehow showed him as senile and doddering as Trump depicted.
The fact that Biden was trying to keep his image as a calm and sober person clearly did not work last night. Columnist Gustavo Arellano told Lost Angeles Times that Biden “made the same mistake” as trying to be civil in the effort to take on Trump.
In comparison, Biden and Hillary showed nearly familiar responses to Trump’s pugnacious interruptions with reluctant smiles, silent and finally made concessions to let him talk. In the first presidential debate of Trump in 2016, it was recorded that Hillary was interrupted 70 times, nearly doubled the number in which the President was interrupted.
Trump’s style of aggressiveness had existed even when he was against some of his male opponents in the Republican Party presidential debates earlier in 2016.
That being said, however, throughout the debate, Biden, at least three times, looked straight into the camera and decisively talked with the viewers that “American people should speak. You should go out and vote,” which regained his stability as a person following 50 years in politics.
Jamille Tran
