PARTICIPANTS:
President Joe Biden (D) and
Former President Donald Trump (R)
MODERATORS:
Dana Bash (CNN) and
Jake Tapper (CNN)
开场介绍 #
TAPPER: We’re live from Georgia, a key battleground state in the race for the White House. In just moments, the current U.S. president will debate the former U.S. president as their parties’ presumptive nominees, a first in American history.
We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world to our studios in Atlanta.
This is the CNN presidential debate.
BASH: This debate is being produced by CNN and it’s coming to you live on CNN, CNN International, CNN.com, CNN Max, and CNN Espanol.
This is a pivotal moment between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in their rematch for the nation’s highest office. Each will make his case to the American people with just over four months until Election Day.
Good evening. I’m Dana Bash, anchor of CNN’s “INSIDE POLITICS” and co-anchor of “STATE OF THE UNION”.
TAPPER: I’m Jake Tapper, anchor of CNN’s “THE LEAD” and co-anchor of “STATE OF THE UNION”.
Dana and I will co-moderate this evening. Our job he is to facilitate a debate between the two candidates tonight.
Before we introduce them, we wanted to share the rules of the debate with the audience at home.
Former President Trump will be on the left side of the screen. President Biden will be appearing on the right. A coin toss determined their positions. Each candidate will have two minutes to answer the question, and one minute each for responses and rebuttals. An additional minute for follow-up clarification or response is at the moderator’s discretion.
BASH: When it’s time for our candidate to speak, his microphone will be turned on and his opponent’s microphone will be turned off. Should a candidate interrupt when his microphone is muted, he will be difficult to understand for viewers at home.
At the end of the debate, each candidate will get two minutes for closing statements. There is no studio audience tonight.
Pre-written notes, props, or contact with campaign staff are not permitted during the debate. By accepting our invitation to debate, both candidates and their campaigns agreed to accept these rules.
TAPPER: Now, please welcome the 46th of the United States, Joe Biden.
BIDEN: Folks, how are you? Good to be here. Thank you.
TAPPER: And please welcome the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump.
Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.
经济与通货膨胀 #
TAPPER: Let’s begin the debate. And let’s start with the issue that voters consistently say is their top concern, the economy.
President Biden, inflation has slowed, but prices remain high. Since you took office, the price of essentials has increased. For example, a basket of groceries that cost $100, then, now costs more than $120. And typical home prices have jumped more than 30 percent.
What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?
BIDEN: We’ve got to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me.
We had an economy that was in freefall. The pandemic was so badly handled. Many people were dying. All he said was it’s not that serious, just inject a little bleach in your arm. You’ll be all right.
The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15 percent. It was terrible.
And so, what we had to do is try to put things back together again. And that’s exactly what we began to do. We created 15,000 new jobs. We brought out in a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.
But there’s more to be done. There’s more to be done. Working-class people are still in trouble.
I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania. I come of household where the kitchen table – if things weren’t able to be met during the month, was a problem. Price of eggs, the price of gas, the price of housing, the price of a whole range of things.
That’s why I’m working so hard to make sure I deal with those problems, and we’re going to make sure that we have reduced the price of housing. We’re going to make sure we build 2 million new units. We’re going to make sure we cap rents, so corporate greed can’t take over.
The combination of what I was left with and corporate greed are the reason why we’re in this problem right now.
In addition to that, we’re in a situation where if you had to take a look at all that was done at his administration, he didn’t do much at all. By the time he left, there’s – things were in chaos, literally chaos.
And so we put things back together. We created, as I said, those jobs. We made sure we had a situation where we now – we brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for – for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400. No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug, all the drugs they can include (ph) beginning next year.
And the situation is making – and we’re going to make that available to everybody, to all Americans. So we’re working to bring down the price of – around the kitchen table. And that’s what we’re going to get done.
TAPPER: Thank you.
President Trump?
TRUMP: We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us.
We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression, the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished – so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.
But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have, is getting us out of that COVID mess. He created mandates – that was a disaster for our country.
But other than that, we had – we had given them back a – a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID. And nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID.
He has not done a good job. He has done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.
TAPPER: Thank you.
President Biden?
BIDEN: Well, look, the greatest economy in the world, he’s the only one who thinks that, I think. I don’t know anybody else who thinks it was great – he had the greatest economy in the world.
And, you know, the fact of the matter is that we found ourselves in a situation where his economy, he rewarded the wealthy. He had the largest tax cut in American history, $2 trillion. He raised the deficit larger than any president has in any one term. He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who has lost more jobs than he had when he began, since Herbert Hoover. The idea that he did something that was significant.
And the military, you know, when he was president, they were still killing people in Afghanistan. And he didn’t do anything about that. When he was president, we were still finding ourselves in a position where you had a notion that we were this safe country. The truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any this – this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did.
TAPPER: President Trump, I want to follow up, if I can, you want –
[crosstalk]
TRUMP: Am I allowed to respond to him?
TAPPER: Well, I’m going to ask you a follow-up. You can do whatever you want with the minute that we give you. I want to follow up. You want to impose a 10 percent tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. How will you ensure that that doesn’t drive prices even higher?
TRUMP: It’s not going to drive them higher. It’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China – and many others, in all fairness to China – it’s going to just force them to pay us a lot of money, reduce our deficit tremendously, and give us a lot of power for other things.
But he – he made a statement. The only thing he was right about is I gave you the largest tax cut in history. I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history. And that’s why we had all the jobs. And the jobs went down and then they bounced back and he’s taking credit for bounce-back jobs. You can’t do that.
He also said he inherited 9 percent inflation. No, he inherited almost no inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months. And then it blew up under his leadership because they spent money like a bunch of people that didn’t know what they were doing. And they don’t know what they were doing. It was the worst – probably the worst administration in history. There’s never been.
And as far as Afghanistan is concerned, I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power. He got out, it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.
TAPPER: President Trump, over the last eight years, under both of your administrations, the national debt soared to record highs. And according to a new non-partisan analysis, President Trump, your administration approved $8.4 trillion in new debt.
While so far, President Biden, you’ve approved $4.3 trillion in new debt.
So former President Trump, many of the tax cuts that you signed into law are set to expire next year. You want to extend them and go even further, you say. With the U.S. facing trillion-dollar deficits and record debt, why should top earners and corporations pay even less in taxes than they do now?
TRUMP: Because the tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen just prior to COVID, and even after COVID. It was so strong that we were able to get through COVID much better than just about any other country. But we spurred – that tax spurred. Now, when we cut the taxes, as example, the corporate tax was cut down to 21 percent from 39 percent, plus beyond that, we took in more revenue with much less tax and companies were bringing back trillions of dollars back into our country.
The country was going like never before. And we were ready to start paying down debt. We were ready to start using the liquid gold right under our feet, the oil and gas right under our feet. We were going to have something that nobody else has had. We got hit with COVID. We did a lot to fix it. I gave him an unbelievable situation with all of the therapeutics and all of the things that we came up with, we – we gave him something great.
Remember, more people died under his administration, even though we had largely fixed it. More people died under his administration than our administration, and we were right in the middle of it.
Something which a lot of people don’t like to talk about, but he had far more people dying in his administration.
He did the mandate, which is a disaster, mandating it. The vaccine went out. He did a mandate on the vaccine, which is the thing that people most objected to about the vaccine. And he did a very poor job, just a very poor job.
And I will tell you, not only poor there, but throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore.
We’re like a Third World nation between weaponization of his election, trying to go after his political opponent. All of the things he’s done. We’ve become like a Third World nation, and it’s a shame.
The damage he’s done to our country – and I’d love to ask him, and will, why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.
TAPPER: President Trump, we will get to immigration later in this block. President Biden, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to this question about the national debt.
BIDEN: He had the largest national debt of any president in a four-your period, number one. Number two, he – that $2 trillion tax cut benefited the very wealthy. I – what I’m going to do is fix the tax system.
For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised $500 million – billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period.
We’d be able to right wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do – childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the – with – with – with the COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with – look, if – we finally beat Medicare.
TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden. President Trump?
TRUMP: Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in, they’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security.
This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security. These millions and millions of people coming in, they’re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security. He will wipe out Medicare. So he was right in the way he finished that sentence. And it’s a shame.
What’s happened to our country in the last four years is not to be believed. Foreign countries, I’m friends with a lot of people. They cannot believe what happened to the United States of America. We’re no longer respected. They don’t like us.
We give them everything they want, and they think we’re stupid. They think we’re very stupid people.
What we’re doing for other countries, and they do nothing for us. What this man has done is absolutely criminal.
TAPPER: Thank you, President Trump.
Dana?
BASH: This is the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This morning, the court ruled on yet another abortion case, temporarily allowing emergency abortions to continue in Idaho, despite that state’s restrictive ban.
Former President Trump, you take credit for the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which returned the issue of abortion to the states.
TRUMP: Correct.
BASH: However, the federal government still plays a role in whether or not women have access to abortion pills. They’re used in about two-thirds of all abortions.
As president, would you block abortion medication?
TRUMP: First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill. And I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.
And if you look at this whole question that you’re asking, a complex, but not really complex.
Fifty-one years ago, you had Roe v. Wade, and everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders.
And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court, and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted.
Now, 10 years ago or so, they started talking about how many weeks and how many of this are getting into other things, but every legal scholar, throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the states. I did that.
Now the states are working it out. If you look at Ohio, it was a decision that was – it was – it was an end result that was a little bit more liberal than you would have thought. Kansas, I would say the same thing. Texas is different. Florida is different.
But they’re all making their own decisions right now. And right now, the states control it. That’s the vote of the people.
Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in the exceptions, I am a person that believes. And frankly, I think it’s important to believe in the exceptions. Some people, you have to follow your heart, some people don’t believe in that.
But I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I think it’s very important. Some people don’t. Follow your heart.
But you have to get elected