Donald Trump may have become unhinged in the first Presidential debate, but Joe Biden missed multiple opportunities. A Presidential debate is probably the only forum in which Trump’s base will listen to a Democrat. So Biden needs to do better on them. Here’s how he can, on some key fronts:
1. Trump’s attack on Hunter Biden’s board seat
Biden should have wondered aloud how Trump could worry about Hunter when China awarded Ivanka seven trademarks and loaned $500 million to an Indonesian resort featuring Trump-branded properties as Trump lifted the bipartisan ban on selling parts to Chinese telecom company ZTE for spying.
2. Trump’s financial and tax information
In discussing Trump’s $750 federal income tax payment, Biden should have said that his $441 million of debt is more troublesome because much of it is to the Russians. As Eric Trump said“We don’t rely on American banks; we have all the funding we need out of Russia,” and Don Jr, said "Russians make up a disproportionate cross-section of our assets." Maybe that explains why our President chooses to forgive Putin’s atrocities and support him over our own intel agencies.
Biden should have looked at Trump’s hair and said, “and you didn’t get your money’s-worth from the $70,000 that you paid your hair stylist and deducted from your income.
3. Trump claiming he’s done a great job on Covid
Donald, let’s go back to when you took office and your officials ignored the Obama administration’s pandemic simulation, insisting your people knew more than Obama. You also ignored multiple warnings of the “significant probability of a lethal modern-day pandemic," for which you were told the country was unprepared. Then your National Security Council adviser disbanded our entire pandemic response team and you never replaced it.
The Defense Production Act authorizes the president to lead the production and distribution of medical and protective materials in an emergency. But you told governors that the federal government is "not a shipping clerk" and states should get their own supplies.
Let’s remember that President Obama and I coordinated world leaders to stop the Ebola virus at its source. We sent 10,000 worker to West Africa and led the fight against Ebola at home. Our efforts resulted in only 11 cases and two deaths in the U.S. How are you doing? Do the numbers 7.22 million cases and 206,000 deaths come to mind?
4. Trump saying he wants a fair election
Biden should have asked, how come 22 of the 25 states that adopted voter restrictions since 2010 are controlled by Republicans? And Trump’s reference to encouraging his supporters to be poll-watchers should have been followed by, “Do you mean like the demonstrators waving Trump flags and Trump-Pence signs and trying to block access to a voting site in Fairfax, Virginia?”
5. Leaving the Paris Climate Accord
Biden should have explained that the Paris Accord is an international forum, like the World Health Organization, the Iran nuclear deal and the Transpacific Trade Partnership. In abandoning them and degrading NATO, America lost opportunities to influence and lead.
TPP was a trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim countries that excluded China and was worth one third of global GDP. It would have eliminated 18,000 tariffs every type of American-manufactured good and most agricultural products, and reduced tariffs by as much as 59% for U.S. autos and 40% for U.S. poultry. Biden should have said, “Donald, you must not have known what was in it when you railed against it as the worst trade deal you ever saw.”
China signed their own trade agreement with these countries and excluded the U.S. Now China is taking over multinational organizations, setting global standards for air travel, telecommunications, and agriculture, and stifling scrutiny of its behavior and human rights abuses.
6. Trump bragging he created the strongest economy and Obama created the weakest
Biden should have emphasized that more jobs were created in the 31 final full months of Obama’s presidency than during the first 31 months of Trump’s presidency, and during comparable 36-month periods employers added 23% more jobs under Obama.
For the first time in our history other than wartime, our deficit and debt, even before Covid, have gone up while jobs and GDP were growing – all thanks to Trump’s tax cuts.
And as to the rising stock market, the richest 10% of Americans own more than 87% of stocks.
7. And finally...
Biden needed to turn to Trump and say, “Donald, you can’t make something true by saying it’s true.” And then look into the camera and say, “America, you need to stop believing his lies.”
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