Hear
NEW YORK.- During most of Thursday’s debate, the former president Donald Trump verbally attacked President Joe Biden, presenting his political opponent as an ineffective leader with a torrent of attacks that were often disingenuous, lacking context, or vague enough to be misleading.
Trump directly attacked Biden’s personality, calling him “weak” and disrespected by world leaders who “laughed” at him.
He tried to accuse Biden of corruption, calling the president a “Manchurian candidate” who was “paid by China”, a nod to frequent accusations of undue influence for which there is no evidence.
He directly blamed Biden for a wave of immigrants who “arrive and kill our citizens at a level we have never seen,” a hyperbolic claim that is not supported by available statistics.
And in a wild misrepresentation of the facts, Trump falsely claimed that Biden “encouraged” Russia to attack Ukraine, despite Biden’s consistent attempts to drum up support for Ukraine and his administration taking active steps to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin not to launch an invasion.
Trump’s comments during the debate were not substantially different from the way he normally attacks Biden during his rallies, where he describes the president as a leader who is somehow both clumsy and corrupt as he leads the country to ruin.
But the barrage of attacks during the debate was particularly surprising given that Biden stood just feet away, unable to interrupt or effectively challenge Trump because of debate rules that kept his microphone muted. And while the debate moderators, the CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bashthey concentrated on keeping the peace, They didn’t even try to check Trump’s claims, which allowed the statements to pass unchallenged.
Biden pulled some punches, including some of the debate’s most memorable moments. He said Trump had the “morals of an alley cat” and accused him of having sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant.
But overall, Biden was on the defensive from the beginning in the face of a constant stream of insults, false characterizations and attacks from Trump.
Taking advantage of Biden’s faltering speech at the beginning of the debate, Trump pounced at a moment when Biden stumbled and said: “I don’t really know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
But Trump’s most forceful attacks revolved around immigration, an issue that animated his successful 2016 campaign and that he has tried to put at the center of his bid to return to the White House.
The former president invoked the idea of “Biden migrant crime”, claiming that Biden’s lax border policy had allowed terrorists and criminals to cross the border illegally.
Trump accused his successor of “ridiculous, insane, very stupid policies” that fueled a crime wave, pointing to high-profile murders involving immigrants. He vaguely accused Biden of killing “so many people at our border” by failing to stem the surge in migrants, a claim he did not back up with statistics.
Experts said those highly publicized cases do not represent a broader trend. Studies have concluded that immigration does not raise crime rates.
Trump also went straight for Biden’s profile on the world stage. He claimed that Putin was “laughing” at the president’s leadership and his failure to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia on a spying charge that U.S. officials vehemently deny. “Our entire country is exploding because they don’t respect you,” Trump told Biden.
He extended those criticisms to the military, arguing that “our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand” the president. (Trump, while in office, is said to have denigrated senior US military officials.)
Repeating his frequent claims that Biden is corrupt, Trump revived his allegations that Biden received improper payments from a Chinese energy company associated with his son Hunter and brother James. There is no evidence that any part of those payments, which began after Biden left the vice presidency, ended up with Joe Biden.
But Trump also directly attacked Hunter Biden, who was found guilty this month of three felonies related to purchasing a gun while battling drug addiction. Called Hunter “a very high-level convicted criminal.”
Trump was convicted last month of 34 felonies in Manhattan related to hush money payments to a porn star.
During the discussion on abortion, Trump also resorted to a popular fake news story in conservative circles: He said Biden and pro-abortion advocates want to “take the life of a child in the eighth month, in the ninth month [de gestación]and even after birth.”
By Michael Gold
The New York Times
