This essay continues my analysis of the first Presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Explanatory clarifications are shown in square brackets. My interpretation of Mr. Biden’s comments are shown indented and in italics. Note: I’ve corrected some of the grammar, and also deleted some of the Mickey-Mouse banter between the two candidates, as indicated.
Biden Policy Example 5:
Mr. Wallace: Gentlemen, can we move on to the economy? The economy is, I think it’s fair to say, recovering faster than expected from the shutdown in the second quarter. The unemployment rate fell to 8.4% last month. The Federal Reserve says the hit to growth which is going to be there is not going to be nearly as big as they had expected. President Trump, you say we are in a V shaped recovery. Vice President Biden you say it’s more of a K shape. What difference does that mean to the American people in terms of the economy? President Trump, in this segment, you go first.
Mr. Trump: So we built the greatest economy in history. We closed it down because of the China plague, which was very hard, psychologically to do. He didn’t think we should close it down, and he was wrong, again. To me it — people would be dead now, instead of still 204,000 people is too much, one person is too much, should have never happened from China. But what happened is we’ve closed it down and now we’re reopening, and we’re doing record business. We had 10.4 million people in a four month period that we’ve put back into the workforce. That’s a record the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before, and he wants to close down the — he will shut it down again. He will destroy this country, you know, a lot of people, between drugs and alcohol and depression, when you start shutting it down and you take a look at what’s happening in some of your Democrat run states where they have these tough shutdowns, and I’m telling you it’s because they don’t want to open it. One of them came out last week, you saw that, said they’ll open up November 9. Why November 9 — because it’s after the election. They think they’re hurting us by keeping them closed. They’re hurting people. People know what to do. They can social distance, they can wash their hands, they can wear masks — they can do whatever they want, but they can open these states up. When you look at North Carolina, when you look at — these governors are under siege in Michigan and a couple of others. You got to open the states up. It’s not fair. You’re talking about almost like being in prison. And you look at what’s going on with divorce, look at what’s going on with alcoholism and drugs. It’s a very, very sad thing. And he’ll close down the whole country, this guy will close down the whole country and destroy our country. Our country is coming back incredibly well, setting records as it does it. We don’t need somebody to come in and say let’s shut it down.
Mr. Wallace: Alright, your two minutes sir, we’re now moved to you. As I said posing the question, the President says it’s a V shape recovery, you say it’s a K shape recovery. What’s the difference?
Mr. Biden: The difference is millionaires and billionaires like him, in the middle of COVID crisis, have done very well. The billionaires have made another $300 billion. Because of his profligate tax proposal and you only focus on the market. But you folks at home, you folks living in Scranton and Claymont — all the small towns and working class towns in America. How well are you doing? This guy paid a total of $750 in taxes. … The fact is that worked on this in a way that he’s going to be the first President in the United States to leave office, I mean fewer jobs in his administration than when he became President. Fewer jobs than when he became President. The first one in American history. Secondly, the people who have lost their jobs are those people who have been on the front lines, those people who have been saving our lives, those people who have went out there dying, people who have been putting themselves in the way to make sure that we could all try to make it. The idea that he is consistent, that we go forward and open when you have almost half the states in America with a significant increase in COVID desks and COVID cases in the United States of America, and he wants to open it up more. Why does he want to open it up? Why doesn’t he take care of the American — you can’t fix the economy until you fix the COVID crisis, and he has no intention of doing anything about making it better for you all at home, in terms of your health and your safety. Schools — why aren’t schools open? Because it costs a lot of money to open them safely. You know, his administration was going to give the teachers and school students masks. Then they decided, no, couldn’t do that, because it’s not a national emergency, not a national emergency. They’ve done nothing to help small businesses, nothing. They’re closing. One is six is now gone. He ought to get on the job, and take care of the needs of the American people, so we can open safely.
Interpretation: Here Mr. Trump made a tactical error. He knows, correctly, a President has no authority to shut anything down. The “lockdowns” and shuttering of businesses were done entirely by the respective Governors of the states. The re-opening of businesses is likewise due to the actions of those Governors. But Mr. Biden believes, or wants you to believe, that all the job losses and business closings were because Mr. Trump ordered it, which is patently false. Mr. Biden’s policy is that the President should have the authority to close down the economy at his sole discretion. The schools aren’t open because the local school boards and the states have decided not to open them; it has nothing to do with any Federal policy. But again, Mr. Biden’s policy is that the Federal government should dictate when and how schools open across the country.
Biden Policy Example 6:
Mr. Wallace: [To Mr. Trump]: Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?
Mr. Trump: Millions of dollars.
Mr. Wallace: You paid millions of dollars?
Mr. Trump: Millions of dollars, and you’ll get to see it.
Mr. Biden: When?
Mr. Trump: But let me tell you, Chris. Let me just say something. It was the tax laws — I don’t want to pay tax. Before I came here, I was a private developer. I was a private business person. Like every other private person, unless they’re stupid, they go through the laws and that’s what it is. He passed a tax bill that gave us all these privileges for depreciation, and for tax credits. We built a building and we get tax credits, like the hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. You get an asset, which by the way, was given to me by the Obama administration, if you can believe that. Now the man got fired up right after that happened but–
Mr. Wallace: Vice President Biden, do you want to respond?
Mr. Biden: I do want to respond. Look, the tax code that made him, put him in a position that he pays less tax than a school teacher. It’s because he says he’s smart because he can take advantage of the tax code. And he does take advantage of the tax code, but that’s why I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts. And we’re going to eliminate those tax cuts and make sure that we invest in the people who, in fact, need the help. People out there need help–
Mr. Trump: But why did you not do it over the last 25 years?
Mr. Biden: Because you were President and destroyed things.
Interpretation: Here is where Mr. Trump made a tactical error. He has previously said he wasn’t going to release his taxes, but now implies that he will. This will be a never-ending story for the Marxist mainstream media. Regardless of what he paid, Mr. Trump is correct: he took advantage of the tax code written over the years by Congress, which would include Mr. Biden’s time in both the House and Senate. But Mr. Biden claims that all those advantages were given by the 2017 tax cut bill, signed by Mr. Trump, which is patently false. Mr. Biden is convinced, or wants you to be convinced, that all the inequities and special tax exemptions in the tax code are Mr. Trump’s fault. Mr. Biden’s policy is to revise the tax code, but he refuses to tell us what changes will be made.
Biden Policy Example 7:
Mr. Wallace: President Trump, I’d like to continue with this. I promise we’re going to get to the issue of law and order in a moment. Your administration directed federal agencies to end racial sensitivity training that addresses white privilege or critical race theory. Why did you decide to do that, end with sensitivity training? And do you believe that there is systemic racism in this country, sir?
Mr. Trump: I ended it because it’s racist. I ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane. That it was a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place. And you know it and so does everybody else. And he would know it.
Mr. Wallace: What is radical — What is radical about racial sensitivity training?
Mr. Trump: If you were a certain person, you had no status in life, it’s sort of a reversal. And if you look at the people, we would pay people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly very sick ideas. And really, they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to allow that to happen. We have to go back to the core values of this country. They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it’s a racist place, and they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not going to allow that to happen.
Mr. Wallace: Vice President Biden?
Mr. Biden: Nobody’s doing that. He’s just, he’s racist. Here’s the deal, I know a lot more —
Mr. Wallace: Let him finish.
Mr. Biden: The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like, what insults them, what is demeaning to them. It’s important that people know they don’t want to, many people don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. But it makes a big difference. It makes a gigantic difference in the way a child is able to grow up and have a sense of a sense of self esteem. It’s a little bit like how this guy and his friends looked down on so many people. They look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics like me who grew up in Scranton. They look down on people who don’t have money. They look down on people who are of a different faith. They look down on people who are a different color. In fact, we’re all Americans. The only way we’re going to bring this country together is bring everybody. There’s nothing we cannot do, if we do it together. We can take this on and we can defeat racism.
Interpretation: Mr. Biden seems to believe that America is hopelessly divided on either race, religion, income, and ethnicity. Therefore, his solution is to balkanize the people, separating them by those features so that we will all be “sensitive” and make sure no one has their self-esteem injured. That is not a suitable plan for the real world. This is how the privileged elite plan to convince otherwise normal people that America is evil and should be destroyed, to be replaced by some utopian vision planned by the elites. Mr. Biden wants you to believe that once we have achieved universal personal harmony, we will have paradise on earth. It did not work for Robespierre, or for Lenin, or Castro, or Mao, or Chavez; and it won’t work in America. Is there some racism in America? Of course, and don’t forget to count Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in that group. The way to defeat the existing racism is to encourage equality of opportunity, not to emphasize the immaterial differences between people.
Biden Policy Example 8:
Mr. Wallace: Gentleman, I’m going to take back control. And I want to get to another subject, which is the issue of protests in many cities that have turned violent. In Portland, Oregon, especially, we had more than 100 straight days of protests, which I think you would agree about peaceful protests. Many of those turned into riots. Mr. Vice President, you say that people who commit crimes should be held accountable. The question I have though is as the Democratic nominee, and earlier tonight you said that you are the Democratic Party right now. Have you ever called the Democratic mayor of Portland the Democratic governor of Oregon and said ‘Hey, you got to stop this. Bring in the National Guard. Do whatever it takes, that you’d stop the days and months of violence in Portland?
Mr. Biden: I don’t hold public office now. I am a former Vice President. I’ve made it clear, I’ve made it clear in my public statements that the violence should be prosecuted. Anyone who committed it —
Mr. Wallace: But you’ve never called for the people – excuse me, sir. You’ve never called for the leaders in Portland, and in Oregon, to call in the national office and knock off 100 days of riots.
Mr. Biden: They can, in fact, take care of it if he’d just stay out of the way. Look-
Interpretation: So now Mr. Biden’s policy is to blame anyone who is not a Democrat for all the riots in the cities run by Democrats. It’s all Trump’s fault that the Governors of Oregon and Washington have not called out the resources needed to stop the riots. Mr. Biden falsely claims that somehow Mr. Trump is preventing the National Guard from intervening. From a policy perspective it is evident that if Mr. Biden gets elected, everything will be Mr. Trump’s fault (just as President Obama blamed his fiascos on former President George W. Bush).
Summary of Part 2:
Mr. Biden’s policies as derived from these four examples are:
- The President has absolute authority to regulate both the economy and the schools.
- The current tax code is full of benefits for the wealthy, and he will encourage Congress to pass some revisions. But exactly what those changes are is a secret (probably because they benefit Wall Street and Hollywood, the current financiers of the Democrat party).
- America is evil and not worth preserving.
- Everything that goes wrong in a Biden administration will be Mr. Trump’s fault.
