October 22: On This Day In 2020
Programming note: We just want to ensure you saw the video produced by our collaborators at Schlep Labs and NowThis Impact yesterday. Their piece covered the same topic we did (Trump's efforts to attack the trans community), as part of their One Day Under Trump series. Click here to see it on Instagram, or here for YouTube
So Much Craziness in the Second Trump-Biden Debate. (Well, was it the “second” or “third” debate? There were supposed to be three, but Trump cancelled the middle one because he objected to the format. It’s the second time they met that we’re focusing on here.)
That debate, OTDI 2020, was an all-you-can-eat buffet of ludicrous Trump (mis)statements. Here’s are five of the most notable, but your Five Faves may differ:
Covid: “It will go away. And as I say, we’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away.” In reality, America under his leadership was nowhere near “rounding the corner” in October 2020. More than 1.2 million Americans have now died from the virus.
Trump accused Biden, with no evidence, of “getting” $3.5 million from Russia, “and it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow and it was the mayor of Moscow’s wife. … I never got any money from Russia. I don’t get money from Russia.” Biden: “We learned that (Trump) paid 50 times the tax in China, has a secret bank account with China, does business in China, and in fact, is talking about me taking money?” This weird concept of the wife of the mayor of Moscow paying Biden keeps popping up if you listen to Trump long enough. He even brought it up again at his debate with Harris this year. However, it’s a lie. Meanwhile, the Trump Family and their companies have received several billion dollars from foreign governments since Trump was inaugurated.
Investigations of Trump: “I was put through a phony witch hunt for three years. It started before I even got elected. They spied on my campaign. No president should ever have to go through what I went through.” None of that was true, of course. Though that didn’t stop him from repeating those lines endlessly.
North Korea: “I have a very good relationship with him (Kim Jong Un). Different kind of a guy, but he probably thinks the same thing about me. We have a different kind of a relationship. We have a very good relationship and there’s no war.” There was also no agreement that North Korea would put down its arms either. Biden said he'd meet with KJU, unlike Trump, only “On the condition that he would agree that he would be drawing down his nuclear capacity. The Korean Peninsula should be a nuclear free zone.” Here's the brief history, in V short acts, of the Trump-KJU romance.
Immigration: “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels… and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers.” Biden: “What happened? Kids were ripped from their (parents) arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of the sets of those parents, and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”
Note: One could reasonably argue that Trump's claim to know a lot about wind power, such as it "kills all the birds" should have been a "greatest hit" too. But, Trump has spent a lot of time over the years claiming to be the world's leading expert on nearly everything.
Also note: One could argue that Trump may have been "crazy" in this 2020 debate, Biden was "incapable" in the 2024 rematch. Well, in '24 a poor debate performance was enough reason for Biden's party to gently usher him out of the race; wouldn't it have been nice if Trump's party had had the decency to do the same.
Dive Deeper
See PBS’ account of debate’s key moments
ABC News has video of five key moments during the debate
The debate transcript is here
Pic by Elvert Barnes
On This Day In The Trump Administration: So much craziness in the second Trump-Biden debate