President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden faced off tonight during the last 2020 presidential debate, where they discussed the coronavirus pandemic, foreign interference in US elections, immigration and more.
If you are just tuning in, here are some key lines and moments from the night:
Living under the coronavirus pandemic
- “It will go away and as I say, we’re rounding the turn, we’re rounding the corner. It’s going away,” Trump said.
- “[Trump] says, we’re learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it,” Biden said.
Health care
- “People deserve to have affordable health care, period. Period, period, period,” Biden said. “And the Bidencare proposal will provide for that.”
- Trump has long said he would unveil a plan to replace Obamacare that would continue to protect those with pre-existing conditions. However, he has yet to do so.
Foreign interference in US elections
- “They will pay a price if I’m elected,” Biden said, specifically referring to interference by China, Russia and Iran. “They’re interfering with American sovereignty. That’s what’s going on.”
- The President said he was informed of the recent election interference efforts, and underscored Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s assessment that the efforts by Iran and Russia and were done to undermine Trump’s candidacy. “I knew all about that,” Trump said.
Children separated from their parents at the border
- “The 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 a strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand-new wall. You see the numbers. We let people in but they have to come in legally,” Trump said. In terms of reuniting these children with their families, Trump said his administration has a plan and “we’re working on it very — we’re trying very hard.”
- “Five hundred plus kids came with parents. They separated them at the border to make it a disincentive to come to begin with. We’re tough. We’re really strong. And guess what. They cannot — it’s not coyotes didn’t bring them over. Their parents were with them. They got separated from their parents. And it makes us a laughing stock and violates every notion of who we are as a nation,” Biden said. “Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated. And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal. It’s criminal.”
Relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
- “I have a very good relationship with him. 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,” Trump said.
- “He’s talked about his good buddy who’s a thug, a thug, and he talks about how we’re better off. And they have much more capable missiles, able to reach US territory much more easily than they ever did before,” Biden said. He said he would only meet with the North Korean leader “on the condition that he would agree that he would be drawing down his nuclear capacity.”
How New York state responded to the pandemic
- Trump called New York City “a ghost town,” where restaurants “are dying” due to shutdowns and its Democratic-led government. “If you go and look at what’s happened to New York, it’s a ghost town. It’s a ghost town. And when you talk about plexiglass, these are restaurants that are dying. These are businesses with no money,” the President said.
- Biden championed New York state for stemming the number of Covid-19 infections and deaths. “Take a look at what New York has done in terms of turning the curve down in terms of the number of people dying. And I don’t look at this in the terms that he does, blue states and red states. They’re all the United States,” Biden said.
Whether to shut down the US economy again due to Covid-19
- “We can’t close our nation,” Trump said. “We can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does.”
- Biden, meanwhile, used a new line suggesting his goal was not to keep the country locked down. “Shut down the virus, not the country,” he said.
Source: CNN
