Trump-Biden pres­i­den­tial debate in Cleve­land: Top 5 moments

Biden and Trump attacked each oth­er in per­son­al terms for more than 90 minutes

The first debate of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on Tues­day night was fiery from begin­ning to end.

Pres­i­dent Trump and Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden attacked each oth­er in stark­ly per­son­al terms for more than 90 min­utes as mod­er­a­tor Chris Wal­lace worked to get both can­di­dates, but espe­cial­ly Trump, to fol­low the debate rules the can­di­dates had agreed to.

The con­ver­sa­tion ranged from the coro­n­avirus cri­sis to the Supreme Court vacan­cy to health care. It’s not clear how much sub­stance vot­ers could get out of the debate, how­ev­er, as it large­ly con­sist­ed of lines aimed to appeal to partisans.

Here are the top five moments from the first pres­i­den­tial debate.Video

1. Biden and Trump clash on who con­trols the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party

Dur­ing the ini­tial seg­ment on the Supreme Court vacan­cy, the dis­cus­sion turned to health care and Trump began to attack Biden by say­ing that he would be account­able to the Bernie Sanders-back­ing seg­ment of his par­ty and its sup­port for “Medicare-for-all.” In what was the first of many explo­sive spats between the pair, Biden shot back that “I am the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty right now. The plat­form of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is what I in fact approved of.”

It was one of the strongest state­ments from Biden to date dis­tanc­ing him­self from the far­thest-left wings of the par­ty. Trump would con­tin­ue to ham­mer this point through­out the debate.

Notably, also on the Supreme Court top­ic, Wal­lace asked Biden whether he would be will­ing to pack the Supreme Court and sup­port the end of the Sen­ate fil­i­buster. Biden flat­ly refused to take a stance on the issue.

2. Wal­lace reminds the can­di­dates who the mod­er­a­tor is

Dur­ing the tran­si­tion between the first seg­ment of the debate and the sec­ond seg­ment, Trump talked over Wal­lace for sev­er­al sec­onds as the mod­er­a­tor attempt­ed to get his ques­tion in. Wal­lace even­tu­al­ly raised his voice to say, “I’m the mod­er­a­tor of this debate” before fin­ish­ing the question.

Trump and Biden con­tin­u­al­ly talked with each oth­er through­out much of the debate, lead­ing Wal­lace at one point to say, “Gen­tle­men, you real­ize you’re both speak­ing at the same time?”

Just a cou­ple min­utes lat­er while Trump was giv­ing an answer dur­ing his two-minute unin­ter­rupt­ed time peri­od, Biden tried to chime in and Wal­lace respond­ed by remind­ing Biden the time was Trump’s. Wal­lace would con­tin­ue to need to scold both can­di­dates repeatedly.

3. “Just lost the left”

Biden was dis­cussing his health care plan, not­ing that Democ­rats in the pri­ma­ry were attack­ing him over the fact he would not abol­ish pri­vate health insur­ance, as many of the can­di­dates were propos­ing. Trump inter­rupt­ed and accused Biden of hav­ing agreed to abol­ish pri­vate health care and insti­tute Medicare-for-all, which Biden has not done.

Biden, as Trump was incor­rect­ly accus­ing him of fib­bing about health care and hav­ing agreed to a “man­i­festo,” warned Trump he was mess­ing with the “wrong guy, the wrong night at the wrong time.”

Trump replied, in regards to Biden open­ly reject­ing Medicare-for-all, “He just lost the left, you just lost the left.”

Dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about glob­al warm­ing lat­er in the debate, Biden said “the Green New Deal is not my plan” and that he sup­ports “the Biden plan,” which is dif­fer­ent than oth­er Green New Deal plans dis­cussed by oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial candidates.

4. Biden address­es vot­ers per­son­al­ly on coronavirus

One of Biden’s most effec­tive moments of the debate came when the top­ic turned to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and he direct­ly addressed the cam­era and the vot­ers at home as he made his case for why he is the best per­son to han­dle the pandemic.

He ref­er­enced the record­ings from jour­nal­ist Bob Wood­ward of Trump say­ing ear­li­er this year that he down­played the coro­n­avirus so as not to cause pan­ic, and told Amer­i­cans, “You don’t pan­ic, he panicked.”

Trump on the top­ic warned that Biden wants to “shut the coun­try down” and would “destroy the country.”

5. Clash over masks and shutdowns

As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued on the top­ic of coro­n­avirus, Wal­lace asked Trump why he con­tin­ues to hold large ral­lies with no social dis­tanc­ing and sparse mask usage in clear vio­la­tion of the guide­lines from his own admin­is­tra­tion. Trump defend­ed him­self by not­ing that the ral­lies hap­pen out­side at air­ports and that “peo­ple want to hear what I have to say.”

Biden respond­ed by telling vot­ers, “He’s not wor­ried about you” and slammed Trump for the han­dling of his rallies.

“He’s been total­ly irre­spon­si­ble the way in which he has han­dled the social dis­tanc­ing and peo­ple wear­ing masks, basi­cal­ly encour­aged him not to,” Biden said. “Alright, he’s a fool.”

Trump replied by reem­pha­siz­ing that Biden would close the coun­try and that the shut­downs are “hurt­ing peo­ple” both finan­cial­ly and in their men­tal health.

Biden in his response said the recov­ery from the coro­n­avirus cri­sis may look good in the stock mar­ket and for mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires, but that things aren’t improv­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly yet for the aver­age per­son. And Biden said keep­ing the coun­try shut down would help the econ­o­my long term.

“You can’t fix the econ­o­my until you fix the COVID cri­sis,” Biden said. “He ought to get on the job and take care of the needs of the Amer­i­can people.

Source: foxnews​.com