The First Presidential Debate – A National Embarrassment

News Flash Story

Vijaya Chandrasoma

The first of three scheduled presidential debates was held in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, with Republican contender, incumbent President Trump and Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden taking center stage. The debate was divided into six 15-minute segments, set to include each candidate’s record, Covid19, the Supreme Court, the economy, race relations and violence and the integrity of the election.

Tuesday’s debate was held under the perennial clouds of the scandals involving Donald Trump, the latest one being a New York Times story about the president’s taxes, a mystery that has been guarded more carefully than the gold at Fort Knox. The Times revealed that Trump had paid no federal taxes for 11 of the 15 years before 2015, and had paid just $750 in federal taxes for 2016 and 2017. All the while enjoying the lifestyle of a billionaire. Among the most egregious of tax fraud he is alleged to have committed included a questionable $72.9 million tax refund, and a $70,000 deduction for hair styling – evidently money ill spent.

The Times’ report also revealed Trump’s personal debts amounting to $421 million to unnamed foreign creditors, which will be due and payable in 2022.

The moderator was Chris Wallace, the news anchor of Fox News, renowned for his tough and wide ranging interviews. In spite of working for Fox News, the Trump propaganda machine, Wallace is nationally respected as an impartial journalist.

Wallace did himself no favors at this debate, unable as he was to control Trump’s incessant interruptions and bullying. At times, the debate featuring the leaders of the Free World, moderated by one of the nation’s best, non-partisan Anchors, deteriorated into a shouting match reminiscent of the caterwauling of the fisherwomen in my home town of Hikkaduwa.

The consensus at the end of a painful 90 minutes on Tuesday night was that it was the most chaotic presidential debate in the history of the nation. The TIME magazine headline was “Just Cancel the Last Two Debates. America Has Suffered Enough.” Chris Hayes of MSNBC called it a “Performance of Our National Catastrophe”. Perhaps CNN Anchor Jake Tapper described the debate best: “A hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck”.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is “carefully considering” format changes for future debates, designed to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues. Short of shutting up Trump with a dog muzzle while Biden is speaking, I fear the efforts of the Commission are doomed to failure.

The debate provided many winners and one distinct loser.

The biggest winners were the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and far right, fascist organizations, when Trump refused to denounce them before a TV audience of 73 million viewers, a tacit endorsement of white supremacist terrorism. On September 17, 2020, Trump appointed FBI Director, Christopher Wray warned, under oath before a Senate Committee, that white supremacists posed the single most lethal terrorist threat faced by America today. Trump’s refusal to denounce these terrorist movements has been taken as an endorsement, a call to violence. As Plato said centuries ago, “Your silence gives consent.”

A close second were adversarial nations like Russia, China and Iran, whose ambitions to sow discord and chaos in the United States have met with spectacular success. The Kremlin and Beijing are already mocking the debate, using it as an example of proof that America has relinquished its claim to leadership, and has diminished confidence in the democratic process.

Vice President Biden completed the trifecta, by merely withstanding Trump’s desperate lies and bullying, and remaining calm. He scored brownie points by calling the President of the United States a clown, and for the most memorable line in the debate: “Will you shut up, man?”

The only loss was sustained by the American people.

No comprehensible light was thrown on the policies of the combatants, or their plans for the management of the health, economic and climate crises America faces today. Trump went on his usual rant about how he had created the greatest economy the world has ever seen, which has been slowed by Covid19; he guaranteed, given four more years, that he will take it back to its former glory, that he alone can fix the mess he himself has largely created. Wallace responded with some fact-checking, reminding Trump that President Obama’s last three years in office had higher growth rates and lower unemployment figures than those of Trump’s first three years.

When Trump bragged that he had done a phenomenal job in containing the pandemic, Biden pointed out a few examples of his colossal incompetence, including outrageous and self-serving predictions that the virus will go away, as if by a miracle, in April; that children are immune to the virus; that it can be cured with injections of disinfectant and UV rays; and that the vaccine is around the corner. The nation has to date suffered over seven million infections and 208,000 fatalities; with 200,000 more deaths projected before the end of the year. Dr. Ashish Jha, Harvard Professor of Global Health said last week that our hesitance to take personal protective measures like masks and social distancing, thanks to Trump’s happy talk and mocking of these measures as a sign of weakness, has resulted in at least 150,000 preventable deaths, to date. The virus is spiking in at least 26 states, and shows no sign of abating throughout the nation. Trump continues to downplay the severity of the virus, lying that the US is “rounding the turn” on Covid19, a statement refuted by the nation’s leading epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Trump was asked about his plans to repeal Obamacare, a case which will be heard by his stacked Supreme Court on November 10. When told that the repeal of Obamacare will result in the loss of health insurance for over 20 million people, he lied that he has a replacement health plan “in hand”. The same hand that has been hiding the same mythical replacement plan since 2017.

He was challenged that his new ultra-Christian Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, will play a major role in repealing Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision regarding the Constitutional right of women on reproductive freedom. Trump has long opposed this landmark decision.

There were some important, if frightening, takeaways from Tuesday’s debate:

Trump denied that he had paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017. He said that he had paid millions in taxes during that period, an assertion which he could easily prove if he would only release his tax returns for the past few years. Strangely, he made no comment about his debt of $421 million to foreign creditors. The danger to the security of a nation when its president carries huge debts to foreign adversaries is incalculable and terrifying.

Trump refused to denounce white supremacist groups, which he has failed to do throughout his presidency. Trump was asked, by both Biden and Wallace, whether he would condemn these groups, specifically the Proud Boys (a far-right white supremacist group, a part of the Trump cult who are regulars at Trump rallies), and warn them to desist from engaging in the racial violence which has recently erupted in many cities. In fact, far from warning them, Trump said “Proud Boys, Stand Back and Stand by”, an exhortation to await his orders to violence. “Stand Back and Stand By” immediately became the new rallying cry of this violent fascist group.

Trump is regarded by white supremacists as a fellow traveler and an important recruiting tool for these terrorist, KKK style groups which have proliferated throughout the nation since Trump’s inauguration. In a style immediately recognizable by those of us who lived in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump is assembling an extra military force who will wreak violence at his command, if the election goes against him.

Trump refused to take the pledge that he would accept the results of the election, and to keep his supporters in check if the count goes on after November 3. He continued making false statements about the legitimacy of mail-in ballots. He is inciting voter intimidation by his far right vigilantes, which is against the law. The FBI has confirmed that white supremacist terrorism provides the greatest threat to law and order since the Civil War. As Trump himself predicted at the end of the debate; “This is not going to end well.”

Sadly, there is little doubt that Trump will be the first president in the history of a once-great nation to refuse to accept the will of the electorate and surrender the White House gracefully, if he loses the election. Trump will pull out all the stops to stay in power, abusing his compliant Supreme Court, and inciting violence by his carefully assembled militia, as if his life depends on it. Which it does, as he will face multiple charges of tax fraud, sexual assault, abuse of power, even treason, the day after he leaves the Oval Office.

Decent Americans have lived the past four years enveloped by a feeling of pervasive helplessness in the face of the racist antics of a narcissistic psychopath. But this feeling is just an illusion. The American voter has the power to Make America Great Again by turning up at the polls on November 3, in what will prove to be the most fraught election in its history. One that will determine the democratic and ideological future of the nation for generations to come.