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Short Take: An Additional (Guest) View on the Presidential Debate

By Ron Seigel / July 1, 2024




Early, last Friday morning, I, like many other Americans, received an email message requesting my reaction to Thursday’s presidential debate.

 

In response, I expressed what may be the unorthodox opinion that President Joe Biden won it. Here is why.

 

In his own quiet way, President Biden raised many important points backed up with statistics revealing critical information voters need to know.

 

Biden pointed out how Trump caused the current deficit by letting the super-rich get out of paying taxes. He revealed Trump's personal immorality—and even more important—his frightening alliance with avowed Nazis, as well as his readiness to sabotage due process.

 

Through Trump's grandiose statements and the bombastic personality he cultivated in his television days on The Apprentice, he attempted to distract viewers from understanding or even registering the true facts concerning his actions and his agenda.

    

I was almost amused by Trump’s comments that if he were in office, Russia’s Vladimir Putin would never have dared to invade Ukraine. Trump has persistently applauded Putin and taken his side on every conceivable issue. He has cheered on—perhaps even instigated—the Republican party’s obstruction of aid necessary for Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian invasion. And he has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from NATO to America’s detriment and Putin’s benefit. It is nearly impossible to conceive that Trump, if he had won the 2020 presidential election, would have done anything but capitulate to whatever Putin cared to do.

 

One hopes that in the coming days, Biden will make these vital points more forcefully than he did at the debate, and that Democratic leaders at all levels as well as those in the media will keep covering these facts.

 

Overall, though, it is clear to me that, in the debate, Biden demonstrated that he would be the better president. 


Ron Seigel has had a long career as a journalist. He has been a reporter forThe Michigan Citizen, as well a free-lance contributor to such news organs as The Christian Science Monitor, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, amongst others. (Ron Seigel also happens to be the brother of My Washington Whispers columnist, Jessie Seigel.)


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Leipow
Jul 01, 2024

Thursday night was the so-called debate between Biden and Trump. For most Americans the debate was not about who had better ideas about leading our country forward, not about whose presidency was better for the American people, and not about policies at all. It was about which man was the more palatable of the two. The voters who already support Biden and Trump will not change who they support as a result of the debate. But those who are undecided are looking for a President they can feel proud of, who will represent them well to the people of the world, and who does not come across as a doddering old man.

Policy is by far the most critical fa…

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