CNN moderator Dana Bash wanted to know how Donald Trump would fight climate change \u2014 the existence of which Trump has repeatedly questioned over decades in business and as president despite the voluminous scientific evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n
But Trump had a few other things on his mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, let me just go back to what he said about the police, how close the police are to him,\u201d Trump said in reference to President Biden \u2014 before talking about how many police groups had endorsed him; how the Trump administration passed an economic development package called opportunity zones; how his administration passed a criminal justice reform package; how \u201cmillions of people are pouring into our country\u201d; and how Biden was losing support from Black and Hispanic voters, among other topics.<\/p>\n
So Bash tried again \u2014 82 seconds later \u2014 to learn what Trump would do, if anything, to reduce the effects of climate change if he won the presidency in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever,\u201d he said falsely, quickly wrapping up his answer.<\/p>\n
The debate moved on.<\/p>\n
Much of the focus of Thursday\u2019s debate focused on Biden\u2019s confusing and meandering answers, and the ensuing panic his weak performance caused among Democratic officeholders, donors and operatives. The consensus view among most Republicans and Democrats was that Trump was clearly the winner of the first 2024 debate.<\/p>\n
As for Trump, however, he repeatedly evaded topics he was not interested in speaking about, following the advice of advisers who encouraged him to move the conversation to friendlier ground such as immigration and the economy. It highlighted the challenge of interviewing Trump \u2014 who often says whatever he likes no matter the question and bulldozes interviewers with long answers, including myriad topic changes and falsehoods.<\/p>\n
Asked Friday whether Trump wanted to address any of the topics he dodged Thursday, his campaign issued a statement that did not.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Donald J. Trump delivered a dominant debate performance, focusing on the key issues like the economy, rising costs, and Biden\u2019s border bloodbath,\u201d Trump spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said. \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s debate performance was not only a master class but a devastating blow that cemented Joe Biden\u2019s weakness, failure, and dishonesty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant, said Trump showed surprising discipline and was \u201ceffective in talking about the messages he wanted to push, the topics he wanted to talk about and he showed remarkable discipline sticking to that strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe pushed the messages that were most helpful to his candidacy. He kept bringing the debate back to the topics that he wins on,\u201d Conant said. \u201cIf a candidate ducks an issue the voters actually care about, the voters might punish them for it, but I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll face the punishment for what he did there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah Matthews, a former spokeswoman in the Trump White House, said Trump was able to get by with evading questions because Biden was \u201cnot equipped to call out Trump. He wasn\u2019t up to the job \u2026 He failed miserably. It was his job to do it, and he couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so crazy we aren\u2019t talking about Trump\u2019s insane responses he gave or his inability to answer the questions he was asked because we are all talking about Biden\u2019s poor performance,\u201d said Matthews, who has been an outspoken Trump critic since leaving the administration. \u201cIf any other Democrat was up onstage, the contrast would have been very clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden also evaded questions at times. At one point, he inexplicably answered a question about abortion by talking about immigration \u2014 switching from a topic where he is favored over Trump to one where he fares poorly.<\/p>\n
Still, Trump dodged far more often. The first evasion of the night was related to the attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump\u2019s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results after making false claims the election was stolen. CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Trump what he would say to voters who believed he abdicated his responsibility on Jan. 6 by encouraging people to go to the Capitol and by not publicly denouncing the riots for hours after they started.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd let me tell you about January 6. On January 6, we had a great border, nobody coming through, very few. On January 6, we were energy independent. On January 6, we had the lowest taxes ever,\u201d he said, part of a stream of false claims.<\/p>\n
Trump was soon asked if he would support a two-state solution between Palestinians and Israel. He has vacillated on the issue over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d have to see,\u201d he said. He then dove into a stemwinder of an answer that was laden with misleading claims and falsehoods about Europe and NATO \u2014 and that had nothing to do with Israel or Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Later in the debate, Tapper said it cost more than $11,000 per year to raise a child in the United States, and that the cost of child care for two children is higher than rent for many Americans. What would Trump to do to make child care more affordable?, Tapper asked.<\/p>\n
Trump instead bragged about firing John F. Kelly, his former chief of staff, a topic that had come up earlier in the debate. He also touted his firing of James B. Comey, the former FBI director. \u201cThey were no good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The former president then launched into criticizing Biden for not firing people and called Biden the \u201cworst president\u201d in the history of the United States. For two minutes, he attacked Biden on a range of issues, including immigration and the U.S. military\u2019s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he wins this election, our country doesn\u2019t have a chance. Not even a chance of coming out of this rut. We probably won\u2019t have a country left anymore. That\u2019s how bad it is. He is the worst in history by far,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Tapper asked again if Trump would like to talk about child care after Biden spoke. Trump, whose administration passed a child-care tax credit, was not interested.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust so you understand, we have polling. We have other things that do \u2014 they rate him the worst because what he\u2019s done is so bad,\u201d he began, speaking for another minute about Biden without discussing the cost of child care.<\/p>\n
Trump was asked later what he would do to limit the scourge of opioids in the United States and the deaths they cause. He alleged without evidence that Biden was a \u201cManchurian candidate\u201d who was paid by China, that his tariff policy worked, that he saved \u201cour steel industries\u201d and a range of other false and misleading claims.<\/p>\n
Tapper asked again about opioids without luck.<\/p>\n
One more time, Tapper tried. It didn\u2019t work, as Trump veered from immigration policy to Russia\u2019s imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will have him out very quickly, as soon as I take office, before I take office,\u201d Trump said, bragging about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
The conversation again moved to the Jan. 6 attack and whether Trump would accept the results of the 2024 election if Biden won. Trump instead talked about how Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine would have never started if he had won reelection.<\/p>\n
Tapper asked again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s a fair and legal and good election \u2014 absolutely,\u201d he said, before reverting to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. \u201cI would have much rather accepted these but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous that if you want, we\u2019ll have a news conference on it in a week or we\u2019ll have another one of these on, in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
CNN moderator Dana Bash wanted to know how Donald Trump would fight climate change \u2014 the existence of which Trump has repeatedly questioned over decades in business and as president despite the voluminous scientific evidence to the contrary. But Trump had a few other things on his mind. \u201cWell, let me just go back to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}