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The Daily

Chaos and Contempt: The First Presidential Debate

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode contains strong language. Both presidential candidates had clear goals for their first debate on Tuesday. For Joseph R. Biden Jr., the contest was an opportunity to consolidate his lead in polls before Election Day. President Trump’s task was, politically, a taller order — to change the course of a race that he seems to be losing. His tactics for doing that emerged quickly: interrupt and destabilize. The result was a chaotic 90-minute back-and-forth, an often ugly melee in which the two major party nominees expressed levels of acrid contempt for each other. We speak to our correspondent Alexander Burns about the mood and themes of the debate and whether any of it moved the dial for the election. Guest: Alexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: With cross talk, lies and mockery, President Trump made little attempt to reassure swing voters about his leadership. Mr. Biden hit back: “This is so unpresidential.”In his second time moderating a presidential debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News struggled to rein in the president’s behavior.Here are six takeaways from the debate.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro.

0:03.6

This is a daily.

0:06.0

Our nation needs to be credible and strong.

0:09.0

When we say we're somebody's friend,

0:11.0

everybody's got to believe it.

0:13.0

I see a future when the world is at peace

0:16.0

with the United States of America

0:19.0

promoting the values of democracy and human rights

0:22.0

and freedom all around the world.

0:25.0

Over the past several decades of presidential debates.

0:28.0

The president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

0:33.0

so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception.

0:37.0

Sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions

0:40.0

because you think they're right.

0:42.0

Americans have watched as candidates display differences of policy.

0:47.0

I want to go through the federal budget line by line,

0:50.0

page by page, programs that don't work,

0:52.0

we should cut programs that we need,

0:54.0

we should make them work better.

0:57.0

A government spending has gone completely out of control.

1:00.0

Ten trillion dollar debt were given to our kids.

1:03.0

A half a trillion dollars were we owe China.

...

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