Trump, Biden clash on abortion, Ukraine, and immigration | WORLD
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Trump, Biden clash on abortion, Ukraine, and immigration

The candidates dived into issues in an updated debate format


President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Thursday night debated for 90 minutes about topics ranging from Supreme Court opinions to their golf games. CNN hosted the debate in a studio in Atlanta with no audience and strict time limits on candidates’ responses. Biden paused and verbally stumbled on several occasions and listed his policy accomplishments in a monotone rasp. Trump countered with a more energetic demeanor. Biden began demonstrating more energy as the debate progressed and as he clashed with Trump on these key issues:

Immigration: Trump claimed his administration had effective policies in place to prevent illegal immigration. Biden had since opened the border and allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to flood into the country, he said. Trump evaded answering a question from CNN host Jake Tapper about how he would remove illegal immigrants from the country if he became president. Biden said that the number of illegal immigrants coming across the border had decreased by 40 percent. He added that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had endorsed him. The agency’s union denied that claim in a tweet posted during the debate, stating that it never had endorsed Biden and it never would. Trump said the agency had endorsed him.

Economy: Biden argued that Trump had left him with an economy that was flat on its back and now was the most successful and fastest-growing in the world. He said the United States added hundreds of thousands of new jobs during his time in office. Even so, Biden didn’t deny that prices had risen under his administration or push back on Tapper’s claim that grocery prices had risen by 20 percent during his presidency. Trump said that his administration had overseen the greatest economy in the history of the United States. His administration helped the economy overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and come back stronger than it had before, he added.

Abortion: Trump claimed credit for the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which he said most Americans supported. Biden countered, citing constitutional scholars’ support for the decision while it was in place. Trump said that states now could decide what policies should be put in place to protect unborn babies. Biden said he supported Roe, but he did not want late-term abortions. Trump pointed out that many Democrats back policies that allow for late-term or even partial-birth abortions. Trump said that he supported the Supreme Court’s recent decision that allows continued use of the abortion drug mifepristone.

Ukraine: Trump said the war should not have begun and that it would not have happened if he was in office. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin witnessed the United States’ disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden and felt he could get away with invading Ukraine. Biden said Trump had encouraged Putin to wage war on Ukraine and had threatened to abandon NATO as Putin worked to reassemble the former Soviet Union. If reelected, Trump promised to end the war at some point between Election Day and his inauguration. Trump added that he would not accept Putin’s terms for ending the war in Ukraine.

Israel: Trump insisted that Hamas would not have attacked Israel if he was in office. “Iran was broke with me,” he said, indicating Iran would not have been able to fund Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Trump said he would have to see whether he supported an independent Palestinian state in the Middle East. Biden said that Israel and other countries in the region had agreed to his three-phase peace plan for Gaza, and Hamas was the only entity prolonging the war.

Age: Biden, now 81, said he’d spent much of his career as the youngest person in politics. He said that, even as an older man, he had made progress serving the United States and had succeeded in bringing benefits to Americans through negotiations with world leaders and business people. Trump, who is 78, claimed that he felt as good as he had a quarter of a century ago. He added that he had taken two cognitive tests and aced them, and touted his success as a golf player.


Josh Schumacher

Josh is a breaking news reporter for WORLD. He’s a graduate of World Journalism Institute and Patrick Henry College.


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CaptTee

The moderators should have asked President Biden, "Since Special Prosecutor Hur said you were unfit to stand trial trial for mishandling classified information and you didn't contest that finding, why are you even running for reelection?"

Scots WhaHaeCaptTee

Yes. CNN moderators made sure to steer clear of a dozen Q’s we deserve his answer to.

(1) How many aliases do you have in those emails on Hunter’s lap top?

(2) Is “10% for the big guy” enough to feed your ice cream habit?

(3) Have you gone to confession for lying when you said you knew nothing about Hunter’s business in China?

(4) Would you like to apologize to the parents of the young lady who was murdered by an illegal alien you encouraged & allowed in?

(5) Which commercial airline has the government contract to fly thousands of illegal aliens from the border to the American city of their choice?

(6) Ukraine is not a NATO nation, so why are treating it like one?

(7) Give me a single shred of evidence that amy action you’ve taken — with trillions of tax payer dollars — made a difference in the earth’s temperature?

(8) Do you regret lying to America about how getting the vaccines means you won’t get Covid?

(9) How much did you “heal the soul of our nation” when you publicly hated on Americans by calling it “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” which dehumanized them in our society?

(10) How many military members did you force out of a career of service with your tyrannical mandatory all-hands vaccine mandate? Break it down by service, by officers & enlisted, senior leaders, SEALS, Rangers & fighter pilots. Detail how depleted our ranks are at this time in raw data and force percentage.

(11) How much do you enjoy unconstitutionally stealing tax dollars to pay off college loans and funding foreign wars and aiding Iran, as compared to destroying the livelihoods of the thousands of military members who took an oath to defend the constitution you are breaking, by kicking them out of service for failing to obey your unlawful order to be injected with EUA science juice?

(12) Do you like being Obama’s puppet? Is it worth selling your soul just to ride in AirForce One?

CaptTeeScots WhaHae

The answer to (6) is that Progressive treat what they want as laws.
Are you old enough to remember everything we were warned would happen it the Equal Rights Amendment passed? Well, it didn't pass, but they act like it did and all the prophesied bad stuff has happened, except drafting women, but that is in the works now.
Don't trust a Progressive for your Life, Liberty, or your Pursuit of Happiness!

Scots WhaHaeCaptTee

So well said, Capt-T!
I was too wee to know arguments @ ERA, but I’m old enough to know you’re exactly right that “Progressive treat what they want as laws.”

Progressives have a wonderful plan for your life. Disturbing how people are fooled into fear about threats of Christian theocracy by the sane progressives who pass laws, Exec orders & Emergency Regulations to rule their every waking thought & deed w/ tyrannical zeal.

And it’s always done “in an abundance of caution” bc “we believe in science” and draped in distorted drivel of “Hope & Change” or “Democracy Now!”

Changed the definition of marriage.
Changed what is a woman.
Changed ideas about men in girl sports.
Changed sex of a child’s affirmed gender.
Changed 1000 more things.
Just getting started.
Lots of “progress” left.
Never ending utopian lies.

Thou shalt obey… or else!
Progressives in some states & nations are changing laws now to takes children away from parents who don’t “affirm their gender.”

Progressives (aka Democrats) hate Life, Liberty & the pursuit of Happiness. They want total control AND compliance. 1984.

Edward Martinez

I didn't watch the debate, I refused to. Many of us already know that Biden is too old and appears frail, and Donald, is well Donald. I will say this; a vote for Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris, and as much as I was a "never trumper", I am far more a "NEVER KAMALA". I do believe that perception, and perspective is everything. And the perception right now is bad. I personally believe we need to step into a "post-partisan" place. Where we work together and identify problems, and SOLVE them. We can do it.

Scots WhaHaeEdward Martinez

“I do believe perception is everything.”

Why?
Truth is everything. Perception is deceiving.
When Jesus was killed on the cross, the perception was one of defeat. But that perception was wrong. Fight perception.

“The perception right now is bad”…
Yes, but the truth is much different!
All Biden’s “badness” that WORLD always writes about would fade away into oblivion if we take the simple step of supporting Trump.

The path to peace is not easy, but it’s not nearly as hard as perception would have you believe. Vote.

BOBGUTJAHR

Expect a Torricelli (cf. the 2002 New Jersey senate race). They will keep Biden in the race as long as they can and replace him with an unknown unless they can get Michelle Obama to run. The relief of having someone else to vote for alone could win the election. The Democrats will do everything they can to avoid presenting a platform.

My proposal is Roy Cooper. No one knows him, he is popular, seems like a nice guy, and was rescued by the Republican legislature from turning North Carolina into a cesspool like California, and would probably carry NC.

A side benefit could be: If sending Trump to jail blows up in their faces like the rest of the Democrat lawfare has, whoever has been running the country could commute the sentence. Biden would take all the arrows and provide a clean slate for Mr. "Watch This Space".

MinnieKins

Of course Trump thinks that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza wouldn't have happened if he had been president. It's easy to say that because we have no way of proving otherwise, but I strongly suspect he's wrong.

Scots WhaHaeMinnieKins

“Strongly suspect”… siting cynically on the sofa & ignoring what happened in the world you don’t know… where nothing can be “proved otherwise” to those unwilling to see, listen & learn.

Gotta take the goggles off…
Then things can come into focus, maybe.

Just Me 999MinnieKins

But what we can conclude without any sense of doubt is that they DID happen on Joe Biden's watch.

From the wishy-washy US response to repeated Houthi missile attacks or some of our touchy-feely policies toward Iran funded pirate ships the political calculation made by terrorists stacks against us. Terrorists calculate the probability of response of their adversaries and the perceived force of the response - they are not afraid of Joe.

After last night's performance the only people left that are afraid of Joe are the American people, but for very different reasons of course...

Scots WhaHaeJust Me 999

Yes, Biden projects wishy-washy weakness.
But the wars at hand are agitated by much more than not being “afraid of Joe.”

It’s Joe “spreading democracy” that instigates & ignites fires, as much as anything else. Biden oversees a US State Department w/ an awful worldview, bellicose and imperial w/ “our way or the highway” (so-called) cooperation.

Powder Keg

TIM MILLERScots WhaHae

Trump abandoned the Kurds and laid the foundation for the debacle of abandoning our Afghanistan allies too.

Scots WhaHaeTIM MILLER

Not accurate

TIM MILLERScots WhaHae

Did he not abandon the Kurts, or did he not lay the groundwork for abandoning our Afghanistan allies?

Scots WhaHaeTIM MILLER

Neither

Pres. Obama laid the ground work for abandoning our Afghan allies 11 years ago… looong before Trump was on the scene. I served in the military at the time.
I remember it all so well.

In 2013, Barack “Hussein” Obama formally announced the beginning of his “negotiations with the Taliban” aimed at handing over Afghanistan to their tyrannical, murderous, Muslim control.
Those “talks” w/ the Taliban were held in the Qatari capital of Doha, where the Taliban opened an official office.

BTW, that’s the same place Biden now barters w/ Hamas. Awful.

The notion that “Trump did that” is just another in a long line of lies…. promoted by people with either no knowledge of recent history, or no desire to tell the truth.

TIM MILLER

Well written.
I was in a hospital ER waiting room, and they were playing it. A pro choice woman in the room was aghast to hear Biden defend third trimester abortions.

While I'm not a fan of Trump's abortion pivot, he did very well at exposing the extremism of the left on this issue.

Scots WhaHaeTIM MILLER

Abortion pivot?
(Hope the ER worked out OK)

TIM MILLERScots WhaHae

Thank you. Just got good news on my wife's surgery.

Yes, the GOP per Trump seems to be abandoning the human life amendment. Trump is all for essentially the pre Roe status quo.

I'm an incrementalist, but I don't thinkw e should lose sight of the ideal.

Just Me 999

What a disaster of a performance for Joe Biden!

The real tragedy of this debate is all the obvious cover-ups being committed by his staff, handlers, and family - they are all exposed now. We all saw a Joe Biden that is not just unfit for the next term but unfit for the next four days.

After spending the entire week doing nothing but preparing for this debate he succeeded in speaking coded message to his followers - I mean what else could it possibly be that he was saying? Several, not just one or two sentences, were utterly incomprehensible.

Other sentences like the US has 1,000 Trillionaires - wheh.

I'm sorry but it became obvious last night that his candidacy is a fraud. The only thing left for the Democrats to restore any shred of integrity to this country, with this obviously unfit candidate, is to withdraw his nomination.

Scots WhaHaeJust Me 999

What became obvious last night, was obvious 4 years ago. His presidency is a fraud, not just his candidacy.

What’s amazing is that it took this “debate” to finally cause people to realize Biden is a corpse.
Telling how the american political class and media establishment are "panicked" over Biden's debate performance, but not the fact that this is the “man” who's supposed to be running the government… supposedly .

I don’t buy it. The next few weeks will be interesting as the plan works itself out.

HBUL8278

It is plain to all who watched that this is Elder Abuse. Poor Joe had trouble putting cogent thoughts together.
And if they were not allowed notes, what was on Biden’s podium? It looked like a pen and paper.

KrisHBUL8278

They were allowed a pen and blank paper to take notes, if needed.

Scots WhaHae

“Biden said he supported Roe.”

But, Biden went on to say far worse:
“If I’m elected, I’m gonna restore Roe v Wade.”

Schumacher should have reported this.
What a filthy rotten barbaric president.
I don’t hear anyone crying “dictator!”
Not holding my breath.
Crickets

Scots WhaHae

Biden claimed, “the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had endorsed him.”
But, “The agency denied that claim in a tweet posted during the debate, stating that it never had endorsed Biden and it never would.”

In plain english, Biden told a bold, blatant lie.

Trump told the truth:
“I’ve been around politicians all my life. I’ve never seen anyone lie like Joe. He’ll look you straight in the eye and lie. He lies about everything.”

RKIM8631Scots WhaHae

They are both dishonest, most politicians are. It is not too late for both parties to change candidates. Neither should be running for president.

Jason MaasRKIM8631

It is too late. Republicans had other options via the primary process but Tucker Carlson created an early very pro-Trump narrative that was nearly impossible to overcome given Trump’s cult-like following.

Democrats would violate their own religion to go with anyone other than Harris instead of Biden, and she’s less probably likely to win than Biden.

Scots WhaHaeRKIM8631

False equivalence & false hope, they are both dishonest. And suggesting REP party will change out Trump… also not true.

Joe is in his own league as a serial liar.
USCBP called him out while he was making stuff up out of thin air on stage last night… grasping for straws & gasping for air in front of God & Country.

Lying is 2nd nature, now. Meaning it’s Joe’s nature. He’s a pure political animal. He’s done nothing (nothing) but press the flesh & bend w/the wind & chase polls & sell snake-oil & cheat for so long — in a bid for ever-more votes to power —he lost any sense of himself. ’He is an animal now — literally — having lost his human “being” to the power brokers… animated only by political survival instincts, like lying. He sold out so much to get to the top that there’s nothing left, but a shell of humanity and a touch of insanity. Sad as it is… It is what it is.

Joe isn’t really “running for president.”
It’s dishonest to say he is. He’s being managed & manipulated — like a puppet — by Barak Obama pulling the strings from the basement, just like he told you he would. Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes…

https://youtu.be/JI2Xtqd4Mts?si=lD0dVm2QviNE6FIM

https://youtu.be/BUMeS-fWvOs?si=eGUjNqzzJnfF6Z9m

It’s time be realistic & get real. Joe is the “front man” for Obama’s 3rd term. He’s not “running” anywhere for anything. Jill & Barak & DNC “should” be ashamed for putting us through this Weekend at Bernie’s.
But Democrats have no shame and Marxists
believe “the end justifies the means,” no matter how mean.

They will stop at nothing to control your life. Controlling Joe is the easy part.