Breaking down Trump vs. Biden's presidential debate

ten. Starts now. That is simply not true. First of all, that was a made up quote. Suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third rate magazine. That's failing like many of these magazines. He made that up. He put it in commercials. We've notified him. I've never heard so much malarkey in my whole life. 19 people that said it was never said by me. It was made up by him. Just like Russia, Russia, Russia was made up. Every single thing he said is a lie. A bitter battle as two U.S. presidents argued to be our next president, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump spending a lot of time calling each other out. The question tonight, though, did this say anything or did they say anything to win your vote? Good evening everyone. I'm Taryn Asher and I'm Roop Raj. Tonight's 90 minute debate. No audience, no pre-written notes and no interruptions. And both men we heard argued. They did more for than the other in the United States during their time in office. We did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good, but the thing we never got the credit for and we should have, is getting us out of that Covid mess. The truth is, I'm the only president this century that doesn't have any this this decade that done any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did. I gave you the largest tax cut in history. I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history. That's why we had all the jobs and the jobs went down. And then they bounced back. And he's taking credit for bounce back jobs. You can't do that. All that money we give Ukraine from weapons we make here in the United States, we give them the weapons, not the money. At this point, and our NATO allies have produced as much funding for Ukraine as we have. That's why it's that's why we're strong. The only person on this stage is a convicted felon. Is the man I'm looking at right now. And the fact of the matter is, he is what he's telling you is simply not true. The fact is that there was no effort on his part to stop what was going on up on Capitol Hill. And all those people, every one of those were convicted, deserves to be convicted. The idea that they didn't kill somebody just went in and broke down doors, broke the windows, occupied offices, turned over desks, turned them over statues. The idea that those people are patriots. Come on. A lot to unpack tonight, and we have a special panel to help us do just that. Our guest, Dave Julio, professor of political science at Oakland University, Dave Julio and then Alexis Wiley next to him, the founder and CEO of Moment Strategy, speaking on the Democrat side. And then Perry Johnson, former Republican presidential candidate and Michigan businessman. And we thank you for being here. You know, this was a highly anticipated debate. Clearly so many eyes watching. And there was a lot of expectation. I think perhaps, maybe, in my opinion, just watching on President Biden, because a lot of people wanted to see how he was going to react in a situation like this and be, clear, clear, concise, you know, be able to command the podium. In your opinion, Dave, when you watched this play out, who do you think won this debate? Well, I resist the idea of trying to bear it down to one winner and one loser. And frankly, I'm wondering whether or not the public was able to win tonight. And I don't think so. I think that the performance both men gave, really showed the, the flaws that they both have, you know, I think President Trump was President Trump and, you know, we it's been four years, but it sure reminds us a lot of his time in office with the way he speaks and some certainly some hyperbole. And over the top exaggerations. But on the, on the President Biden side of the ledger, you know, his age stood out. It really did. And I think that, that is the biggest concern for many Americans. And frankly, he didn't do much tonight to, to give them this wasn't a productive debate. Is well, some in the past I productive I mean look it's always information right. And even if it is information that helps us confirm what we already think. Right. If it if it reinforces what we already think we know. And I think we got a lot of that tonight, I don't think many minds were changed, at least based on the, on the back and forth tonight about either Trump or Biden. Look, and I'll leave it to my colleagues to weigh in here, too. But the people's opinions about Trump and Biden have been baked in for months, if not years. And I don't think anybody's mind was changed on those. And if this debate had to do with two things, I think it was probably competency and also character. And when you look at both sides here, they were trying to drill it. The other one about who had no competency because of age and no character because of actions. Alexis though, I have to ask you as a Democrat watching this with eager eyes, I'm sure wanting to see a presidential Joe Biden. Do you think you saw a presidential Joe Biden? And do you believe him saying things like, I'm finally beat Medicare, saying trillions instead of billions, getting names wrong, stopping midway through an answer and just dropping the entire topic? Was that something that you think shows presidential capability? You know, I'm not going to judge President Biden based on 90 minutes, right? I think that he has had a track record of creating jobs, creating opportunities, driving down the cost of health care for Americans. What we saw tonight from Donald Trump was a lot of lies just peddling lies and he defended January 6th. We saw him talk about what he's going to do with with he celebrated Roe v Wade being overturned. We know the impact that's made on women, especially women who wanted to have children but were in terrible situations and had to be had to make tough choices. That's what stood out to me the most. We'll get we'll get to Trump, we'll get to Trump. And what he said and what he didn't say in a moment. But I have to drill down on Biden and his abilities that were displayed. There are undecided voters and some Democrats who lean a little bit closer to the middle, who wanted to watch, to see whether or not he would be competent. Do you believe that this reinforced the competency or took away from it? I think that what this did was it was 90 minutes where we got a chance. I don't think that he was the most eloquent debater , but I do think that he's a great decision maker. I do think he's been a great president, and I think that most people are not going to just look at this 90 minutes and make a decision. They're going to look at the record. They're going to look at what's been done. Do you mind if we play a clip, though, of Biden real quickly? And we can have all of us in our panelists take a look at it. This is President Biden here tonight. Eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the Covid excuse me, with, dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare and I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more border patrol and more asylum officers. President Trump, I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. Is this going to be used for fodder in political ads during these really decisive four months? And is that something that concerns you? Those ads are being made as we speak. I mean, they are going to I'll be surprised if by the time the show is over, that they're not up on social media, they're going to play it. Perry though I do have a question. I mean, on the flip side of this, when you watched former President Trump up there, you would think he was the best at everything. He just told you, you just believe him. He's the best at everything. I mean, there was certainly some misinformation there that wasn't fact checked, but it was certainly many people knew it if they did their research. But what was maybe, perhaps the most troubling for people watching at home, he still wouldn't be, I guess wouldn't confirm that he would not oppose another election. And he denied the insurrection and really played it down and made it sound like a few people just wanted the Capitol because the police officers let them through. Does should we be worried, though, if he is the next president and something like this could happen again? Because certainly that was very tough for our country. Actually. I think one of the things that he brought out was something that wasn't brought out before that people should understand. He went out of his way to try to get 10,000 troops there because he knew they were going to have people coming there. And then when you have a mob like that, it's so hard to control. It's very, very difficult for one person to control it. Well one person, him though actually three hours he waited in the white House before he said anything. Is that concerning to you? When understand that. What was he going to do if he went out there and they suddenly stormed because he went out there, he would have been blamed for that storm. They already stormed. He encouraged them to do that. I don't think he encouraged them to stay. Let's fast forward, though. We're at the point now where he seems to be playing a down and they won't commit to not calling another possible election if he loses for fraud again. Well, actually, I think the point he was trying to make is that he wants to make sure that we do have a very secure election this time, and he wants people to go out of their way to make sure that they can trust this election, because we have a democracy that we have to believe in. The one thing that I did think you made very, very clear is the fact that when Biden talks about how great it is for middle America, all of Americans can realize in middle America they are hurting now because their overall income in 79 was 78,005. It's 4000 less and there's 22% inflation. I want to show a clip of former President Trump talking about something that he has avoided talking about for a long time, including in an interview I did with him. Climate change is something he doesn't want to touch with a ten foot pole. He was held on that three times today. He didn't answer it the first two times. And finally he said this. Take a listen and Perry, I'd like to know what your thoughts are. Will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis? So I want absolutely immaculate, clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. And we did. We were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage. Actually I don't know where the #### he's been. The idea that anything he said is true. I passed the most extensive. It was extensive. All right, Perry, when it comes to who's more green or who has more climate change experience in trying to get stuff done, do you think Donald Trump is the guy who he says he is on stage here tonight? You are aware of the fact that I have the only CDM company in the entire United States clean Development Mechanism. You do, but Donald Trump. So I'm concerned about I'm referring to the Paris accord. The reason Clinton didn't sign the Paris accord is the same reason Trump didn't want to sign the Paris accord in the Paris accord. It was so onerous on us. Notice that in that accord, China had the ability to continue to increase the amount of pollution they were having, and they weren't going to stop decreasing it until 2026. And the fines that we were that would be imposed on us if we did not meet those agreements were absurd. So to sign that accord made no sense. Of course, it's disbanded as a result of being disbanded. Obviously there are repercussions as a result internationally, but the bottom line is he's fully cognizant of the fact that this accord that we had with Paris was not fair in any way. And he's very accurate when it said it cost us a lot of money and it would have cost America more than anyone else, I would say this is one example of, I think, where the president answered the question really well. And when it comes to clean energy, he has made an unprecedented investment in terms of creating jobs. Many right here in Michigan. Right, right. He is delivering on the future that we want for ourselves and our children. That's what we need to be judging him on. Not like a few minutes of answering a debate with, you know, lying. Donald Trump. Well, you know, a lot of these electric cars. And let's face it, the electric cars got so overbuilt now we can't even sell them. We've got to shows that he's pushing for clean energy at that point right there. You know. But and we know that Trump is against electric cars. But let's get to this point because we know we have first of all a couple of wars going on that were points of contention, but also the border crisis. Of course, Biden was blamed for not doing enough. And Trump claimed that he supports that. These migrants that have come through in a wave of crime that has gone with it, we want to take a listen to what happened today during the debate and respond to that. Take a look what's taking place in our country. We're literally an uncivilized country now. He doesn't want it to be. He just doesn't know he opened the borders. Nobody's ever seen anything like and we have to get a lot of these people out, and we have to get them out fast because they're going to destroy our country. When he was president, he was taking separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages, making sure they were the families were separated. That's not the right way to go. What I've done since I've changed the law. What's happened? I've changed it in a way that now you're in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally. That's better than when he left office. And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers. Now, Dave, this seems like there's a couple key issues that are really going to help decide this election. Border being one of them. Do you think that President Biden has done enough to build the confidence of Americans and make him think that he is protecting us at the border? Well look, there are two issues that are at the top of the list for most Americans, or at least a plurality of Americans. It's the economy at the top of the list, with inflation and high prices being sort of the first sub issue underneath that general umbrella. And the second one is immigration. And I think President Biden is fighting an uphill battle on both of those issues, which is why Donald Trump wants to talk about them. I think on the on the immigration issue, it's very difficult to argue against the images that we see on on news stations that show people streaming across the border. It's also hard to argue with the numbers of illegal crossings that have happened in the last three and a half or so years, right. So he's he's fighting an uphill battle just based on, on on data. Does he I need to do more right now though, Alexis, I think you've seen the president really invest in in this issue. I mean, and he's done it in a really compassionate way, right? President Trump was locking kids in cages while Joe Biden is thinking about things like, how do we make sure that we're protecting families who are here, right? How do we invest in what's in in really protecting our borders? They're doing that. And I think he was actually honest in that answer in that, like there's a lot that needs to be done. He was honest. That's the difference between him and Donald Trump. We only have 30s left. So I'm going to ask you the final question here. Donald Trump. I know he's a friend. He's someone that you're going to be speaking at the Republican National Convention. I am I get all that. But just as an objective American who lives here in Michigan, for an undecided voter out there, could he use a little humility when it comes to admitting some of the things he could do better? Do you believe that that's a good character building piece in a president to say, you know what, I could do that better. Do you think he has that bone in his body? Well, I'm sorry, it's a yes or no question. I'm going to say, do you think do you think he needs to do better at humility and perhaps admitting some of the things that he did? I think Donald Trump acts like Donald Trump and we all know who he is. The one thing I do know, he definitely did a better job on the border. We had 7.5 million people that have entered here under Biden, 2.3 under Trump. Nobody can doubt that he's done a better job on the invitation to Mar-A-Lago still stands now, so that's good. Perry Johnson, good to see you