After hearing that microphones would be muted and U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisors told him to “tone it down,” Americans might have expected the final presidential debate to be far less chaotic than the first. However, microphones were only muted for the candidates’ opening statements on each question posed, and after this time, they were able to interrupt all they wanted. This allowed President Trump to interrupt Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and the debate moderator, Kristen Welker, 34 times, while Biden interrupted 17 times.
Although President Trump was responsible for a majority of the interruptions, Biden was responsible for a majority of the interjections, where he spoke over President Trump for a few words, but did not stop his flow. As blogger Matthew Yglesias tweeted, “Joe Biden is a master of the incredulous ‘come on!’”
Along with interruptions, the lies and misleading words spoken by the candidates were overwhelming. When discussing the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump claimed a vaccine for the virus was “ready.” This wishful thinking is simply false.
Out of the four U.S. clinical vaccine trials in phase three, two trials are paused with no indication of when they will resume, as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have participants with unexplained illnesses. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s trials are waiting on positive results from their clinical trials, with no indication of when these results will come.
With racial justice at the forefront of voters’ minds, Biden falsely claimed that the Obama administration reduced the federal prison population by 38,000 people. In reality, the number of federal inmates shrank by 9,498 from 2008 to 2016.
Traditionally, the final presidential debate is the foreign policy debate, and while this election has plenty of domestic issues to discuss, a significant portion was dedicated to foreign policy issues, such as immigration at the southern border. In response to the extremely unpopular policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border, President Trump claimed they were not separated from their parents but rather arrived with “bad people.”
While children do sometimes come to the border unaccompanied by their parents, Welker was asking about the 545 children who came to the U.S.-Mexico border with their parents and were separated between 2017-18. According to a court filing this week, the parents of those children haven’t been found.
In 2018, the Trump administration announced a zero tolerance policy for every adult illegally crossing the border, separating children from their parents who were criminally prosecuted.
A day before the debate, Biden’s campaign held a drive-in rally in Philadelphia. At the rally, former U.S. President Barack Obama made his first speech in support of his former vice president that included some of the most direct attacks on President Trump that Obama has made since he left office.
For example, he pointed out the double standard of some on the right when it comes to excusing President Trump’s secretive finances, saying, “Listen, can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection? You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me Beijing Barry.”
He framed his dislike of President Trump as nonpartisan, saying, “I never thought Donald Trump would embrace my vision or continue my policies, but I did hope for the sake of the country, that he might show some interest in taking the job seriously. But it hasn’t happened. He hasn’t shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself and his friends.”
These words, delivered by a relatively popular president in the swing state of Pennsylvania, can potentially have an effect on voters.
With so many Americans already casting their ballots, the only truly productive presidential debate came after many citizens already finalized their decisions. For the citizens who have yet to make their decisions and cast their ballot, this last-ditch effort to sway voters was filled with “alternative facts.”
It is unfortunate that out of three presidential debates, the one that was less chaotic but more misleading was the one that could have impacted the election the most, making undecided voters vote a certain way based on a lie. This shows the importance of fact checking every debate.
