ATLANTA—Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump threw a toxic combination of running down the U.S., spouting nonsense about hordes of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and telling outright lies in the 100-minute “debate” pitting him against Democratic President Joe Biden on June 27.
The debate was the first of the scheduled two between the two nominees, and the first to be held before their party conventions officially anoint them later this summer. It was also the first in 64 years held in a studio with no audience, just the candidates on the stage and two CNN reporters asking questions—often trying unsuccessfully to force both to stick to the subject they were quizzed about.
Trump repeatedly harped that under Biden “18 million-19 million criminals and rapists” are coming over the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re migrants whom convicted felon Trump charged would then take over U.S. schools and hospitals and bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He charged that under Biden, the U.S. is a “third world nation.”
And in a racist dog whistle, Trump claimed the migrants, who are almost all people of color, would take jobs, too. He didn’t have to specify whose jobs. For his legions, the one-word answer to that is “whites.”
“Corporate greed has taken over” under Trump, Biden shot back, particularly in high home prices and rents—which he pledged to reduce but wouldn’t say how. “And his administration was chaos.”
Though Trump repeatedly demonized migrants, he ducked a question on whether he would deport every undocumented person—an estimated 10 to 11 million people—as he has promised on the campaign trail, after locking them into internment camps, first.
“The whole country is exploding because of him,” Trump charged about Biden, again citing migration—without offering any proof. Retorted Biden: “All you have to do is listen to what he [Trump] said at the time” he was in the White House after yet another insult. “He didn’t deserve to be president at all.”
And so it went.
Read People’s World debate analysis:
After Biden-Trump debate, the task remains: Block fascism in November
Jan. 6 coup attempt
The two tangled over the U.S. Constitution, with the CNN reporters repeatedly trying to pin Trump down on whether he would honor the election results this year. He didn’t three and a half years ago, ordering more than 1,000 Trumpites to invade the U.S. Capitol in an insurrection to try to stop the electoral vote count.
“I don’t believe I violated the Constitution” that day, Trump claimed—even though his speech ordering the invaders to the Capitol is on tape, as is his refusal to call them off. “I didn’t say that to anybody.”
Trump then proceeded, again without evidence, to say he offered “10,000 soldiers” to both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, to stop the invasion. Video of phone calls show Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., urging top Trump officials to demand he call off the invasion.
And Bowser later noted only the president can federalize the D.C. National Guard for such duty, and Trump never did. His vice president, Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor who also had to flee the invaders, eventually called out the Guard—as a governor can—without Trump knowing about it.
Trump again called the invaders, who displayed a Confederate flag as they rampaged through the Capitol, “patriots.” He did not repeat his frequent promise to pardon them all. Biden reminded listeners Trump has proclaimed that pardon as a goal.
One topic omitted from the discussion: Biden did not mention the possibility that Trump-named U.S. Supreme Court justices will be key deciders about Trump’s pending demand of permanent immunity for himself from prosecution for any crimes, forever, including inciting the insurrection.
Trump also flatly denied he called the neo-Nazis who paraded through Charlottesville, Va., during his first year in the White House “very fine people” or that he denigrated U.S. soldiers who were killed in World Wars I and II. Both statements were caught on tape and before multitudes of witnesses, including high military officers in the latter case, Biden noted.
Criminal-in-chief
And those were just samples of Trump’s lies, including lies about Biden himself. One insult even led Biden to retort Trump “was the only felon” on the stage, referring to Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of violating New York campaign finance and corporate laws. Trump faces sentencing on those charges on July 11.
Trump also faces three other criminal trials, two of them dealing with the insurrection—and all depending on a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s eternal immunity demand. Biden mentioned those only briefly, and not in detail.
Trump laid out fables, or conveniently didn’t mention key facts, on everything from the Afghanistan troop withdrawal to economics at the end of his term three years ago, compared to now. He called the Afghan withdrawal a Biden disaster.
In another example, Trump bragged about appointing the three U.S. Supreme Court justices—Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch—who were the key votes in the court’s 5-4 ruling two years ago stripping away the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban, Trump ducked, saying he’d leave it to the states, but exempt cases of rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life. Asked if he would outlaw a pregnancy prevention pill, Trump said the court has already rejected that option and he’d leave its decision alone.
“I supported Roe v. Wade,” the court’s ruling half a century ago legalizing abortion rights, Biden responded. “It had three trimesters” and three different roles for government in those abortion scenarios, he explained. “What’s he gonna do if the MAGA Republicans get control of Congress?”
Whose economy?
Other than talking about the economy and jobs in general, neither candidate mentioned several key issues. One is the yawning chasm between the rich and the rest of us.
Another is worker rights. Biden touts his pro-worker stands and organized labor’s wins politically and at the bargaining table. Neither of them, however, uttered the word “workers” in the debate.
A third is the multitude of problems facing millions of poor and low-wealth people in the U.S., including hungry kids and homeless families. Unlike popular myths, most of both groups are white. And thousands of them are scheduled to march in D.C. on June 29 in the Poor People’s Campaign, with strong labor, progressive, and CPUSA support, among others.
Instead, Trump touted low inflation at the end of his term. Biden shot back that it was so low then because half the country’s businesses were shut down and joblessness was officially at 14%.
In reality, at the depths of the coronavirus-caused depression, almost a fourth of all people who had been employed were getting federal joblessness checks, including some, like musicians, actors, and independent contractors, who had been ineligible for regular unemployment benefits.
Those checks came via the Democratic-run Congress, in a law it forced on Trump. But his big black magic marker signature was reprinted on the checks four years ago, hoping to sway voters.
Trump continued trying to tout his economic record, even though the CNN moderators pointed out his tax cut for corporations and the rich swelled the federal deficit by $8.4 trillion over his four years, approximately double the increase under Biden in the ensuring three-and-a-half years.
That prompted Biden to respond that inflation was so low because half the country was flat on its back due to the depression. It was also the debate’s only mention of the virus and its impact, except for Trump’s wild claim that the nation should never have shuttered stores, schools, and firms to combat the modern-day plague—a catastrophe he did little to stop.
“They rate me one of the great presidents,” Trump bragged, not saying who “they” are. “Nobody ever created an economy like us where I cut your taxes and produced more business.” He later added cutting regulations to the mix. He conveniently didn’t mention the overwhelming share of his and the GOP’s tax cuts seven years ago went to corporations and the rich. He ducked answering what he would do, if elected, when the individual tax cuts—but not the corporate cuts—expire at the end of next year.
Biden wants to restore the full child care tax credit, which the Republican-run House let lapse at the end of last year. Its temporary existence during the pandemic cut childhood poverty by 40%, analysts say.
“He’s dead wrong” Biden shot back about Trump’s claimed rave reviews. “He will increase taxes on middle class people. This 10% tariff” on all imports” is going to cost the average American family $2,500 a year,” the president added, without giving a source for that figure.
And when CNN moderators pointed out that without changes Social Security benefits “would decline in ten years,” Biden’s solution was “Make the wealthy pay their fair share.” Raising taxes on only the top 1% of taxpayers “will keep it solvent,” he said. Congress has repeatedly rejected taxing the rich more.
“But the biggest thing we can do is to defeat this man,” Biden said, pointing to Trump. “He wants to cut Social Security and Medicare as well.” Trump has floated that idea on the campaign trail. “And without the Affordable Care Act,” passed when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president, “40 million people wouldn’t have health insurance. He [Trump] doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Biden boasted about cutting the cost of insulin and vowed to cut the costs of other prescription drugs. Trump was silent on that. But Biden wasn’t asked about Medicare For All, the government-run single-payer health care system which would put the greedy and lethal private insurers out of business while, its advocates say, putting more money, net, in people’s pockets. More than a dozen unions, led by National Nurses United, support single-payer. Biden and Obama did not during ACA’s passage.
Managing U.S. imperialism
Foreign policy drew a sharp contrast between the two, yet neither offered anything positive.
Trump complained about the U.S. solely funding NATO—until, he claimed, he made other nations pay up. He then declared he would end the war in the Ukraine before next Inauguration Day. He didn’t say how. That led Biden to cite Trump’s past statements saying he would walk away from NATO, letting Russian President Vladimir Putin conquer “Poland, Hungary” and other Eastern European nations after Ukraine. No one, of course, mentioned NATO’s role in provoking military conflict and threatening peace.
Trump also claimed that had he been in power, a bankrupt Iran would never have been able to fund arms to Hamas, and therefore Oct. 7 wouldn’t have happened and, presumably, neither would the ensuing Gaza genocide.
The Israeli military has used U.S.-made weapons, bullets, and bombs to kill almost 40,000 people in retaliation, injure double that number, level Gaza’s infrastructure, and create two million refugees. It’s also caused a split in Biden’s coalition of students, progressives, people of color, and regular Democrats.
Publicly, Biden has recently been testier with Netanyahu, a close Trump friend and political ally. Thinking he would score points, Biden noted he stopped shipping one-ton aerial bombs to the Israelis “because they don’t work very well in [bombing] cities.” Ceasefire campaigners were sure to be disgusted.
As for Trump, he said there hasn’t been enough killing in Gaza yet. “Israel wants to go and I’d let them go and finish” Hamas, Trump retorted. His white nationalist legions are gung-ho for Israel, for messianic reasons of their own. Trump also dithered on supporting an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Biden didn’t mention it.
Reaction
Reaction fell along predictable lines. The first two union leaders to comment on the debate, AFT President Randi Weingarten and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, trashed Trump. The Republican “offered the same stale lies in a pathetic attempt to hide the truth that as president, he betrayed workers and families to govern for the wealthy,” said Shuler.
“Under the Biden administration, union members are winning record contracts in every part of the country, millions of workers are receiving double-digit raises, worker organizing is surging, and millions of pensions are being saved,” Schuler argued. “Trump’s legacy is chaos and division—and his greatest accomplishment in office was a bloated tax giveaway for the wealthy at the expense of working people who make our country run.”
Weingarten admitted Biden did not start strongly. “But he tried to get the facts out and lay down his vision for the country, while Trump told the same lies over and over and was rarely held to account.”
Continuing, she said, “Trump crowed about his tax breaks to billionaires and restrictions on women’s healthcare decisions. He failed to acknowledge his disastrous jobs record, the worst of any president since the Great Depression. He would not commit to upholding the results of the 2024 election and lied again about his loss in 2020.”
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