How did the Biden-Trump debate go?

I didn’t watch the debate (my vote is irrelevant here in Maskachusetts), but now it is time to look at the transcript…

Trump and Biden on COVID-19:

[1:03] Trump: So, as you know, more 2.2 million people, modeled out, were expected to die. We closed up the greatest economy in the world in order to fight this horrible disease that came from China. It’s a worldwide pandemic. It’s all over the world. You see the spikes in Europe and many other places right now. If you notice, the mortality rate is down, 85%. The excess mortality rate is way down, and much lower than almost any other country. And we’re fighting it and we’re fighting it hard. There is a spike. There was a spike in Florida, and it’s now gone. There was a very big spike in Texas, it’s now gone…

In other words, humans are in charge of the virus.

[3:12] Biden: 220,000 Americans dead. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who’s responsible for not taking control — in fact, not saying, I take no responsibility, initially — anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America. We’re in a situation where there are thousands of deaths a day, a thousand deaths a day. And there are over 70,000 new cases per day. Compared to what’s going on in Europe, as the New England Medical Journal said, they’re starting from a very low rate. We’re starting from a very high rate. The expectation is we’ll have another 200,000 Americans dead by the time, between now and the end of the year. If we just wore these masks — the President’s own advisors told them — we could save 100,000 lives.

Humans are in charge and it is as simple as wearing masks (why are the fully-masked-for-months Europeans now suffering from exponential infection?). If true and if obvious, why does it matter what a U.S. President says and does? State governors and mayors can and did order masks (typically starting in April and May; see also Dr. Fauci on masks).

The moderator then asks about a vaccine and when it will show up. Is this a fair question for politicians with zero training in biology or medicine? They’re supposed to have special insight into when a drug or vaccine gets approval and whether the drug or vaccine is effective? Trump eventually gets around to something that a politician could potentially influence, i.e., distribution:

I think my timeline is going to be more accurate. I don’t know that they’re counting on the military the way I do, but we have our generals lined up, one in particular, that’s the head of logistics. And this is a very easy distribution for him. He’s ready to go as soon as we have the vaccine, and we expect to have 100 million vials as soon as we have the vaccine, he’s ready to go.

For Joe:

[6:12] Welker: Vice President Biden, your reaction? Just 40% of Americans say they would definitely agree to take a coronavirus vaccine if it was approved by the government. What steps would you take to give Americans confidence in a vaccine if it were approved?

[6:25] Biden: Make sure it’s totally transparent. Have the scientific world see, know, look at it, go through all the processes. And by the way, this is the same fellow who told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This the same fellow who told you that, don’t worry, we’re going to end this by the summer. We’re about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan and there’s no prospect that there’s going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.

Why would a U.S. president need to be involved in “transparency” regarding vaccine trials. Isn’t it likely that most of the vaccines will be developed outside of the U.S. and the results published outside of the U.S.? We don’t have a monopoly on pharma research.

An argument about who wanted to shut down China earlier ensues. Trump then makes my Your lockdown may vary point!

We can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. He has the ability to lock himself up. I don’t know, he’s obviously made a lot of money, someplace, but he has this thing about living in a basement. People can’t do that. By the way, I, as the president, couldn’t do that. I’d love to put myself in the basement or in a beautiful room in the White House and go away for a year and a half until it disappears. I can’t do that.

(See Town and Country for photos of Joe Biden’s mansions, the first of which was a 10,000 square foot former DuPont mansion purchased in 1974 “as a young senator”.)

Biden succumbs to gender binarism:

That man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their, out of habit, where their wife or husband was, is gone.

What about spouses with the 48 other gender IDs who die from the Trump-caused Covid-19?

How about young slender healthy American Progressives voting themselves into another year or two of lockdown in order to protect old fat unhealthy Republicans?

[12:33] Welker: OK, let’s talk about your different strategies toward dealing with this. Mr. Vice President, you suggested you would support new shutdowns if scientists recommended it. What do you say to Americans who are fearful that the cost of shutdowns, the impact on the economy, the higher rates of hunger depression, domestic and substance abuse, outweighs the risk of exposure to the virus?

[12:51] Biden: What I would say is I’m going to shut down the virus, not the country. It’s his ineptitude that caused the country to have to shut down in large part — why businesses have gone under, why schools are closed, why so many people have lost their living and why they’re concerned. Those other concerns are real. That’s why he should have been — instead of in a sand trap at his golf course — he should have been negotiating with Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats and Republicans about what to do about the acts they were passing for billions of dollars to make sure people had the capacity.

[13:21] Welker: You haven’t ruled out more shutdowns

[13:24] Biden: Oh no, I’m not shutting down the nation but there are, look, they need standards. The standard is, if you have a reproduction rate in a community that’s above a certain level, everybody says, slow up. More social distancing. Do not open bars and do not open gymnasiums. Do not open until you get this under control, under more control. But when you do open, give the people the capacity to be able to open and have the capacity to do it safely. For example schools — schools, they need a lot of money to open. They need to deal with ventilation systems, they need to deal with smaller classes, more teacher, more pods, and he’s refused to support that money, or at least up to now

Is Biden disavowing his previous promise to listen to the Science Karens and shut down whenever they say to do so? (CNN, August 22, 2020) Also, if the schools needed better ventilation systems (like my idea!) and they are under state and local government control, why weren’t they already installed over the summer?

Maskachusetts is featured! We had a powerful shutdown in mid-March, masked city residents starting in April, and a statewide mask law with high compliance starting in early May. We’ve been at least as successful as the early-shut early-masked Peruvians!

[14:46] Welker: Let me follow up, President Trump. You’ve demanded schools open in person and insisted they can do it safely. But just yesterday, Boston became the latest city to move its public school system entirely online after a coronavirus spike. What is your message to parents who worry that sending their children to school will endanger not only their kids, but also their teachers and families?

[15:04] Trump: I want to open the schools. The transmittal rate to the teachers is very small, but I want to open the schools. We have to open our country. We’re not going to have a country. You can’t do this, we can’t keep this country closed. It is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs, they’re committing suicide. There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. There’s abuse, tremendous abuse. We have to open our country.

Trump is totally out of step with his cower-in-place fellow citizens! He hits many of the same points as “The COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life” (The Hill) without recognizing that Americans now care only about COVID-19 deaths, not deaths or loss of life-years from any other cause. Biden is more aligned with the American people that I recognize:

[15:51] Biden: Simply not true. We’re gonna be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We ought to be able to safely open, but we need resources to open. You need to be able to, for example, if you’re gonna open a business, have social distancing within the business. You need to have, if you have a restaurant, you need to have plexiglass dividers so people cannot infect one another. You need to be in a position where you can take testing rapidly and know whether a person is, in fact, infected. You need to be able to trace. You need to be able to provide all the resources that are needed to do this and that is not inconsistent with saying that we’re going to make sure that we open safely. And by the way, all you teachers out there — not that many of you are going to die, so don’t worry about it.

In other words, trillions of dollars have been spent so far, but if Americans spend another few $trillion on Plexiglas, we will show coronavirus who is boss. Biden is also in sync with American priorities. Marijuana and liquor stores are essential and can never be closed. Schools should be the last institutions to reopen. (Contrast to Ireland; in the most severe lockdown so far, everything is closed except for schools, universities, and adult education.)

For a guy who owns hundreds of $millions of NYC real estate, Trump is not going to be selected by the Chamber of Commerce to promote the city:

[16:39] Trump: I will say this, 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 plexiglas — these are restaurants that are dying. These are businesses with no money. Putting the plexiglas is unbelievably expensive, and it’s not the answer. I mean, you’re going to sit there in a cubicle wrapped around with plastic? These are businesses that are dying, Joe, you can’t do that to people, which again, take a look at New York and what’s happened to my wonderful city. For so many years, I loved it. It was vibrant. It’s dying. Everyone’s leaving New York.

Joe Biden doesn’t see color:

[17:34] Biden: Take a look 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 terms of what he does, blue states and red states. They’re all the United States. And look at the states that are having such a spike in the coronavirus. They’re the red states.

In other words, Biden beats up the red states (not that he looks at states in terms of “red” and “blue”) for doing exactly what the scientists told them to do back in March: flatten the curve (NPR). The “red” states that Biden disparages were shut down in the spring and had a low infection rate, thus allowing all Federal resources, including PPE and ventilators, to be directed to New York, California, and other “blue” states.

Trump shades dangerously close to Church of Sweden heresy:

We have to open up and we understand that disease, we have to protect our seniors, we have to protect our elderly, we have to protect, especially, our seniors with heart problems and diabetes problems, and we will protect them.

Trump not only #DeniesScience, but he #InsultsScience:

[18:42] Welker: Let me follow up with you before we move on to our next section. President Trump, this week you called Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s best known infectious disease expert, “a disaster.” You described him and other medical experts as “idiots.” If you’re not listening to them, who are you listening to?

[18:58] Trump: I’m listening to all of them, including Anthony. I get along very well with Anthony. But he did say, ‘don’t wear masks.’ He did say, as you know, ‘this is not going to be a problem.’ I think he’s a Democrat, but that’s okay. He said, ‘this is not going to be a problem. We are not going to have a problem at all.’ When Joe says that, I said — Anthony Fauci said and others and many others. And I’m not knocking him. Nobody knew. Look, nobody knew what this thing was, nobody knew where it was coming from, what it was. We’ve learned a lot, but Anthony said, ‘don’t wear masks.’ Now he wants to wear masks. Anthony also said, if you look back, exact words, here’s his exact words: ‘This is no problem, this is going to go away soon.’ So he’s allowed to make mistakes, he happens to be a good person.

Fact check: “Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is ‘minuscule’; skip mask and wash hands” (USA Today, quoting Saint Fauci, February 2020).

There is an argument about who is more fairly characterized as “Wall Street’s little bitch”. Biden says that his “average contribution” is $43. Is this actually the average or the median? And do we count money spent on efforts to get Biden elected that aren’t officially Biden’s campaign? What about Michael Bloomberg spending tens or hundreds of $millions? From the NYT: “The Biden campaign has trumpeted its success with small donations, but in the last six months it has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000. As sums have grown, transparency has diminished. … the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine.”

Our problems are mostly created by foreigners…

[21:18] Welker: … Just last night, top intelligence officials confirmed again that both Russia and Iran are working to influence this election. Both countries have obtained U.S. voter registration information, these officials say, and Iran sent intimidating messages to Florida voters. This question goes to you, Mr. Vice President, what would you do to put an end to this threat?

[21:48] Biden: I made it clear. And I asked everyone else to take the pledge. I made it clear that any country, no matter who it is, that interferes in American elections will pay a price. They will pay the price. It has been overwhelmingly clear in this election — I won’t even get into the last one — this election, that Russia has been involved. China has been involved to some degree, and now we learned that, that Iran is involved. They will pay a price if I’m elected. Interfering with American sovereignty. That’s what’s going on right now. They’re interfering with American sovereignty.

Trump responds by noting that the Obama-Biden administration sent only humanitarian aid to Ukraine during its fight with the Russians:

[23:56] Trump: Well, let me respond to the first part, as Joe answered. Joe got three and a half million dollars from Russia. And it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow and it was the mayor of Moscow’s wife. He got three and a half million dollars. Your family got three and a half million dollars and you know someday, you’re gonna have to explain — why did you get three and a half? I never got any money from Russia. I don’t get money from Russia. … Between the sanctions, nobody tougher than me on Russia. Between the sanctions between all of what I’ve done with NATO. You know, I’ve got the NATO countries to put up an extra 130 billion, going to $420 billion a year, that’s to guard against Russia. I sold — while he was selling pillows and sheets — I sold tank busters to Ukraine. There has been nobody tougher on Russia than Donald Trump. And I’ll tell you, they were so bad. They took over the, the submarine port. You remember that very well during your term, during you and Barack Obama. They took over a big part of what should have been Ukraine. You handed it to them. But you were getting a lot of money from Russia.

Biden’s response:

[26:06] Biden: I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life. We learn that this President paid 50 times the tax in China, as a secret bank account with China, does business in China, and in fact, is talking about me taking money? I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever, number one. Number two, this is a president — I have released all of my tax returns. 22 years. Go look at them. 22 years of my tax return. You have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. What are you hiding?

How can Trump hide anything now that the New York Times has all of his personal tax returns? And Twitter and Facebook support unlimited information distribution based on those personal returns?

[32:02] Trump: His son didn’t have a job for a long time, was sadly no longer in the military service, I won’t get into that. And he didn’t have a job. As soon as he became vice president, Burisma — not the best, not the best reputation in the world — I hear they paid him 183,000 a month. Listen to this, 183, and they gave him a $3 million upfront payment, and he had no energy experience. That’s 100% dishonest.

[32:31] Biden: No basis for that. Everybody investigated that, no one said anything he did was wrong in Ukraine.

Getting rich if you’re a Washington insider is not “wrong”. But maybe if China is involved, then it is wrong?

[32:35] Welker: OK, President Trump, this is for you. Since you took office, you’ve never divested from your business. You’ve personally promoted your properties abroad. A report this week, which was referenced, does indicate that your company has a bank account in China. So how can voters know that you don’t have any foreign conflicts of interest?

[32:52] Trump: I have many bank accounts and they’re all listed and they’re all over the place. I mean, I was a businessman doing business. The bank account you’re referring to — which is, everybody knows about it, it’s listed — the bank account was in 2013. That’s what it was. It was opened. It was closed in 2015, I believe, and then I decided, because I was going to do, I was thinking about doing a deal in China, like millions of other people, I was thinking about it. And I decided I’m not going to do it, didn’t like it, I decided not to do it, had an account open and I closed it.

[32:26] Welker: OK.

[32:27] Trump: Excuse me, and then unlike him, where he’s Vice President, and he does business, I then decided to run for president after that. That was before. So I closed it before I even ran for president, let alone became president, big difference. He is the Vice President of the United States, and his son, his brother and his other brother are getting rich, they’re like a vacuum cleaner, there’s something —

Not like our vacuum cleaner, completely clogged with golden retriever hair!

Biden: What I’d make China do is play by the international rules, not like he has done. He has caused the deficit in China to go up not down — with China, go up not down. We are making sure that in order to do business in China, you have to give all your intellectual property. You have to get/have a partner in China, it is 51%. We would not do that at all, number one. Number two, we’re in a situation where China would have to play by the rules internationally as well.

Biden is going to shut down the U.S., which presumably would include factories, as soon as a quorum of Science Karens can be assembled. If China is open for business, including factory production, won’t we have to buy more stuff from them to compensate for our own factories being shut as we cower in place? In fact, wouldn’t any cower-in-place society necessarily have to have a wider trade deficit with countries that aren’t cowering?

[36:20] Trump: China pays for $28 billion and you know what they did to pay it, Joe? They devalued their currency and they also paid up, and you know who got the money? Our farmers. Our great farmers, because they would target it. You never charge them anything. Also, I charged them 25% on dumped steel, because they were killing our steel industry. We were not going to have a steel, and now we have a steel industry

Won’t it be American consumers who pay for these tariffs, via higher prices for goods, not the Chinese?

[37:48] Welker: We’re gonna talk about North Korea now. President Trump, you’ve met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s three times. You’ve talked about your beautiful letters with him, you’ve touted the fact that there hasn’t been a war or a long range missile test, and yet North Korea recently rolled out its biggest ever intercontinental ballistic missile and continues to develop its nuclear arsenal. Do you see that as a betrayal of the relationship? Just 30 seconds here because we need to get on to the next topic.

[38:12] Trump: When I met with Barack Obama, we sat in the White House, right at the beginning had a great conversation, was supposed to be 15 minutes and it was well over an hour. He said the biggest problem we have is North Korea. He indicated we will be in a war with North Korea. Guess what, it would be a nuclear war, and he does have plenty of nuclear capability. In the meantime, I have a very good relationship with him, different kind of a guy but he probably thinks the same thing about me.

How do we have time for all of these enemies? The Chinese, Russians, and Iranians are determining our election outcomes and the North Koreans were our “biggest problem” during the Obama administration?

[40:05] Welker: Let me follow up with you, Vice President Biden, you’ve said you wouldn’t meet with Kim Jong Un without preconditions. Are there any conditions under which you would meet with him?

[40:12] Biden: On the condition that he would agree that he would be drawing down his nuclear capacity to get there. The Korean Peninsula should be a nuclear free zone.

In other words, Biden will meet with the North Koreans just as soon as they become incredibly stupid!

[40:43] Biden: We had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe, the rest of Europe.

Any analogy to Hitler is a great one, as I’ve learned on Facebook. But does this make sense? Are the North Korean rulers trying to take over new territory, as the Germans sought to do, or merely hold on to what they’ve got?

[41:47] Welker: All right, let’s move on to American families and the economy. One of the issues that’s most important to them is health care, as you both know. Today, there was a key vote on a new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and healthcare is at the center of her confirmation fight. Over 20 million Americans get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s headed to the Supreme Court, and your administration, Mr. President, is advocating for the court to overturn it. If the supreme court does overturn that law, those 20 million Americans could lose their health insurance almost overnight. So what would you do if those people have their health insurance taken away?

Trump: First of all, I’ve already done something that nobody thought was possible. Through the legislature, I terminated the individual mandate. That is the worst part of Obamacare, as we call it. The individual mandate — we have to pay a fortune for the privilege of not having to pay for bad health insurance. I terminate it; it’s gone. Now it’s in court, because Obamacare is no good. But then I made a decision, ‘Run it as well as you can’ — to my people, great people — ‘Run it as well as you can.’ I could have gone the other route and made everybody very unhappy. They ran it. Premiums are down, everything’s down. Here’s the problem. No matter how well you run it, it’s no good. What we’d like to do is terminate it.

Trump simply admits that he wants to kill one of the few things that Americans love more than wearing masks and cowering in place!

Biden: … the fact that there’s a public option that people can choose, that makes the socialist plan? Look, the difference between the president — I think health care is not a privilege, it’s a right. Everyone should have the right to have affordable health care.

Why were tens of millions of Americans left without insurance under the Biden-Obama administration then? If health care is a right, why does anyone have to fill out paperwork and pay for insurance? Why can’t we show up at the hospital or clinic and claim our right, as people do in Britain via the National Health Service (but there is no right there to a flu shot if you’re over 11 or under 65!). Biden and Obama had a Democrat-controlled Congress for their first two years. Why didn’t they give us our “right”?

Biden: My response is people deserve to have affordable health care — period. Period, period, period. And the Bidencare proposal will, in fact, provide for that affordable health care, lower premiums. What we’re going to do is going to cost some money; it’s going to cost over $750 billion over 10 years to do it

How is it “affordable” if a larger percentage of GDP (in a country that is already #1 in terms of spending) is devoted to this one area of human concern?

51:31 Trump: They say the stock market will rule if I’m elected. If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.

I talked to a money manager the other day. He thinks the market will stay about the same in nominal terms if the Democrats win because the government will be printing money like crazy. After inflation, stocks will be worth less, but we shouldn’t short the market even if we think Biden wins.

Let’s look at the American dream of a planned economy.

Welker: I want to talk about the minimum wage, gentlemen. Mr. Vice President, we are talking a lot about struggling small businesses and business owners today. Do you think this is the right time to ask them to raise the minimum wage? You, of course, support a $15 minimum wage.

Biden: I do, because I think one of the things we’re gonna have to do is we’re gonna have to bail them out, too. We should be bailing them out now, those small businesses. You’ve got one in six of them going under. They’re not going to be able to make it back. They passed a package that allows us to be able to call PPP, money that’s supposed to go to help them do everything from organize how they could deal with their businesses being open safely. Schools, how they can make classrooms smaller, how they can hire more teachers, how they can put ventilation systems in. They need the help, the businesses, as well as the schools, need the help. But this, these guys will not help them. He is not giving them any of the money.

But won’t a higher minimum wage mean that small businesses that require a lot of low-skill labor simply have to close their doors? Trump agrees with the idea of central planning, but wants it to be done by governors:

56:35 Trump: For small businesses — by raising the minimum wage and helping, I think it should be a state option. Alabama is different than New York, New York is different from Vermont. Every state is different. It should be a state option. So it’s very important.

How about low-skill immigration, the issue on which Americans can reasonably split based on whether they’re part of the working class?

Welker: Let me ask about your immigration policy, Mr. Vice President. The Obama administration did fail to deliver immigration reform, which had been a key promise during the administration. It also presided over record deportations as well as family detentions at the border before changing course. So why should voters trust you with an immigration overhaul now?

Biden: Because we made a mistake. It took too long to get it right. Too long to get it right. I’ll be President of the United States, not Vice President of the United States. And the fact is, and I’ve made it very clear, within 100 days, I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people. And all those so called Dreamers, those DACA kids, they’re going to be legally certified again, to be able to stay in this country, and put on a path to citizenship. The idea that they are being sent home by this guy, and they want to do, that is they go to a country they’ve never seen before. I can imagine you’re five years old, your parents are taking you across the Rio Grande River and it’s and it’s illegal. You say ‘Oh, no, Mom, leave me here. I’m not gonna go with you.’ They’ve been here. Many of them are model citizens. 20,000 are first responders out there taking care of people during this crisis. We owe them. We owe them.

But Yale says that the likely number of undocumented migrants in the U.S. is 22 million. Why do only 11 million get citizenship? And why is there a “pathway”? If they’re entitled to citizenship, why not give them citizenship immediately?

How about BLM?

Biden: … my daughter is a social worker. And she’s written a lot about this. She’s got a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in social work. … The fact of the matter is there is institutional racism in America. … We have to provide for economic opportunity, better education, better health care, better access to schooling, better access to opportunity to borrow money to start businesses. All the things we can do. And I’ve laid out a clear plan as to how to do those things. Just to give people a shot. It’s about accumulating the ability to have wealth, as well as it is to be free from violence.

Why didn’t Biden and Obama do all this during their 8 years running the U.S.? Why didn’t they alert Americans to their “institutional racism” between 2009 and 2017? Biden did not have a busy calendar as VP. Why didn’t he go on television every night to offer an anti-racism curriculum to anyone willing to tune in?

[1:08:33] Biden: … We commuted over 1,000 people’s sentences. Over 1,000. … Nobody should be going to jail because they have a drug problem. They should be going to rehabilitation, not to jail. We should fundamentally change the system and that’s what I’m going to do.

In a country with more than 2 million people in prison, he’s proud of letting 1,000 of them out? And why didn’t this “fundamental change” that he proposes happen during the Obama-Biden administration?

Trump is talking about my Dell XPS laptop (cannot be put in sleep mode reliably)!

[1:11:20] Welker: President Trump, I want to stay on the issue of race. We’re talking about the issue–

[1:11:21] Trump: It’s the laptop from hell. The laptop from hell.

[1:11:25] Welker: President Trump, we’re talking about race right now and I do want to speak on the issue of race. President Trump—

Biden says my Dell XPS is a piece of junk #BecauseRussia:

[1:11:32] Biden: Look, there are 50 former National Intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics– four– five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him, his, and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.

[1:11:51] Trump: You mean, the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? You gotta be–

[1:11:58] Biden: That’s exactly what– That’s exactly what–

[1:12:00] Trump: Is this where you’re going? This is where he’s going. The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia?

Department of mind-reading:

[1:12:32] Trump: Well you have to understand the first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter they were chanting ‘Pigs in a blanket’, talking about police, ‘Pigs, Pigs’, talking about our police, ‘Pigs in a blanket, fry’ em like bacon’. I said, ‘That’s a horrible thing’. And they were marching down the street. And that was my first glimpse of Black Lives Matter. I thought it was a terrible thing. As far as my relationships with all people, I think I have great relationships with all people. I am the least racist person in this room.

Biden has a fitting new name for the Proud Boys once they get hit with President Harris’s European-style 20 percent value-added tax (to supplement what are likely to be disappointing income tax revenues):

[1:13:39] Biden: Abraham Lincoln. Here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history. He pours fuel on every single racist fire, every single one. He started off his campaign coming down the escalator saying he’s gonna get rid of those Mexican rapists. He’s banned Muslims because they’re Muslims. He has moved around and made everything worse across the board. He says to them about the ‘Poor Boys’, last time we were on stage here. He said, ‘I told him to stand down and stand ready’. Come on. This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a fog horn.

How will the chief executive of a country that is 15 percent of the world’s economic output and has almost no engineering or infrastructure construction ability (see the California high-speed rail and New York subway system, for example) heal the entire planet?

[1:17:48] Welker: … how would you both combat climate change and support job growth at the same time? Starting with you, President Trump, you have two minutes uninterrupted.

[1:18:15] Trump: So we have the trillion trees program, we have so many different programs. I do love the environment, but what I want the cleanest, crystal clear water, the cleanest air. We have the best, lowest number in carbon emissions, which is a big standard that I noticed Obama goes with all the time. Not Joe. I haven’t heard him use the term because I’m not sure he knows what it represents or means, but I have heard Obama use it. And we have the best carbon emission numbers that we’ve had in 35 years. Under this administration, we are working so well with industry, but what we can’t do– Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. It’s filthy. The air is filthy. …

[1:19:55] Biden: Climate change, climate warming, global warming is an existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it. And we’re told by all the leading scientists in the world that we don’t have much time. We’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to 10 years.

[1:21:48] Trump: … if you look at his plan, you know, you know who developed it? AOC+3. They know nothing about the climate. I mean, she’s got a good line of stuff, but she knows nothing about the climate. And they’re all hopping through hoops for AOC+3. Look, they’re real play costs $100 trillion. If we had the best year in the history of our country for 100 years, we would not even come close to a number like that. …

Humanity is facing an existential threat? Why is Biden worried about Covid-19, which kills as many people as a few bad flu seasons even when a country mostly just gives the finger to the virus? Why not take the $trillions we’re still spending on Covid-19 and instead spend it on preventing Earth from turning into Venus?

Trump points out that fracking saves us from having to fight everyone in the Middle East:

[1:24:00] Trump: Excuse me. We are energy independent for the first time. We don’t need all of these countries that we had a fight war over because we needed their energy. We are energy independent.

Bad news for the Jet A crowd:

[1:28:14] Trump: Would you close down the– Would you close down the oil industry?

[1:28:17] Biden: I would transition from the oil industry. Yes.

[1:28:19] Trump: Oh, transition.

The big close:

[1:29:34] Welker: … Imagine this is your Inauguration Day. What will you say in your address to Americans who did not vote for you?

[1:29:50] Trump: We have to make our country totally successful, as it was prior to the plague coming in from China. Now we’re rebuilding it and we’re doing record numbers, 11.4 million jobs in a short period of time etc.. But, I will tell you, go back before the plague came in, just before, I was getting calls from people that were not normally people that would call me. They wanted to get together. We had the best Black unemployment numbers in the history of our country, Hispanic, women, Asian, people with diplomas, with no diplomas MIT graduates, number one in the class– everybody had the best numbers. …

[1:31:00] Biden: I will say, ‘I’m the American president. I represent all of you whether you voted for me or against me. And I’m going to make sure that you’re represented. I’m going to give you hope. We’re going to move. We’re going to choose science over fiction. We’re going to choose hope over fear. We’re going to choose to move forward because we have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make things better. We can grow this economy. We can deal with a systemic racism. At the same time, we can make sure that our economy is being run, and moved, and motivated by clean energy, creating millions of new jobs. And that’s the fact, that’s what we’re going to do. And I’m going to say, as I said at the beginning, what is on the ballot here is the character of this country. Decency. Honor. Respect. Treating people with dignity. Making sure that everyone has an even chance. Now, I’m going to make sure you get that. You haven’t been getting it the last four years.

We will have higher taxes if we elect Biden, but more hope and more #Science! (And how does “everyone have an even chance” if Biden’s own platform says that he will hand out $billions only to those Americans who identify as “women“, excluding Americans with 50ish gender IDs?)

Readers: What did you notice in this debate? Did either candidate say anything that could significantly affect turnout or, heaven forbid, convince a voter to change party allegiance?