TRUMP: Almost everything I see is from the left wing not from the right wing. Give me a name; who do you want me to condemn?
Q: White supremacist and right-wing militia.
BIDEN: Proud Boys.
TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right wing problem, this is a left wing.
BIDEN: He's own FBI Director said unlike white supremacists, Antifa is an idea, not an organization, not a militia--
TRUMP: Oh, you got to be kidding me. Well, then you know what, he's wrong. Antifa is bad. Antifa is a dangerous radical group.
TRUMP: I ended it because it's racist. I ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane. That it a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place.
Q: What is radical about racial sensitivity training?
TRUMP: If you were a certain person, you had no status in life. It was sort of a reversal. And if you look at the people, we were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas. They were teaching people to hate our country And I'm not going to do that. We have to go back to the core values of this country. They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place. It's a racist place. And they were teaching people to hate our country. I'm not going to allow that to happen.
Trump was asked by debate moderator Chris Wallace to disavow white supremacy. But Trump did not denounce any far-right group, pivoting to talk about Antifa, a left-wing organization.
One Proud Boys organizer posted "President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA... well sir! we're ready!!"
The Proud Boys, a self-described "Western chauvinist" organization, is considered a violent, nationalistic, and misogynistic hate group, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Proud Boys members marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and have organized against Black Lives Matter protests in recent months.
[Pres. Trump walked back his statement post-debate, and denounced the Proud Boys].
Is that true about Portland, the site of ongoing police protests? No, Portland's Sheriff says it's not true. Excerpts from a 9/30 article in "The Hill" with headline "Sheriff from Portland quickly refutes Trump claim of endorsement":
"The sheriff of Multnomah County, Oregon, which includes Portland, quickly refuted President Trump's claim of an endorsement during Tuesday night's first general election presidential debate. 'I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him,' Sheriff Mike Reese responded on Twitter. The sheriff added: 'Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland, but I never thought he'd try to turn my wife against me!' "
BIDEN: [Trump's] own former spokesperson said, "Riots and chaos and violence help his cause." That's what this is all about.
TRUMP: I don't know who said that.
BIDEN: I do. [Former White House advisor] Kellyanne Conway.
TRUMP: I don't think she said that.
[So we found this article from Business Insider magazine on Aug 27, 2020, headlined, "Kellyanne Conway says 'chaos and violence' after the police shooting of Jacob Blake is good for Trump's reelection"; excerpts:
"President Trump's close adviser, Kellyanne Conway, told Fox News that 'chaos and anarchy' following police shootings are good for Trump's reelection effort. 'The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order,' Conway said. Conway was referring to protests following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin this week.
FactCheck: Did Biden use the term "super-predators"? No, not quite. Excerpts from Reason.com on Sept. 29:
Trump has attacked Joe Biden for his role in crafting the 1994 crime bill. It was Hillary Clinton, however, who infamously uttered the term "superpredators" back in 1996. (You can still find plenty of videos of floor speeches of then-Senator Biden railing against "predators" or generally demagoguing on the subject of violent crime.)
The rise of criminal justice reform as a major issue in politics has made the 1994 crime bill a liability for Biden, who has since apologized for his role in tough-on-crime legislation passed in the 1980s and '90s by large bipartisan margins.
In a speech last year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Biden said those bills "trapped an entire generation," and that "it was a big mistake when it was made."
TRUMP: If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a disaster from our standpoint. And people are actually very happy about what's going on because our businesses are doing well.
Q: Do you believe that human greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the global warming of this planet?
TRUMP: I think a lot of things do, but I think to an extent, yes. But I also think we have to do better management of our forest. Every year I get the call, "California's burning!" If you had good forest management, you wouldn't be getting those calls.
Q: If you believe in the science of climate change, why have you rolled back the Obama Clean Power Plan which limited carbon emissions?
TRUMP: Because it was driving energy prices through the sky.
TRUMP: I want crystal clean water and air. I want beautiful clean air. But I haven't destroyed our businesses. Our businesses aren't put out of commission. As far as the fires are concerned, you need forest management. In addition to everything else, the forest floors are loaded up with trees, dead trees that are years old and they're like tinder and leaves and everything else. You drop a cigarette in there the whole forest burns down. You've got to have forest management. I believe that we have to do everything we can to have immaculate air immaculate water and do whatever else we can that's good. We're planting a billion trees, the Billion Tree Project and it's very exciting for a lot of people.
Q: In 2018, in the last midterm election, 31 million people voted mail-in voting. That was more than a quarter of all the voters that year, cast their ballots by mail. Now that millions of mail-in ballots have gone out, what are you going to do about it? And are you counting on the Supreme Court, including a Justice Barrett, to settle any dispute?
TRUMP: I think I'm counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely. I hope we don't need them, in terms of the election itself. But for the ballots, I think so, because what's happening is incredible. This is not going to end well.
BIDEN: The American people have a right to have a say in who the Supreme Court nominee is and that say occurs when they vote for United States Senators and when they vote for the President of United States. They're not going to get that chance now because we're in the middle of an election already. The election has already started.
Excerpts from The Hill e-zine, March 29, 2018: "Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014 during Obama's last two years in office and did not confirm many of his nominees. The Senate's top Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, teamed up to block Democratic efforts to push forward Obama's nominees, slowing down confirmations by the most in six decades. Most notably, McConnell refused to hold a confirmation hearing on Obama's nominee for Supreme Court justice, Merrick Garland. The vacancies left behind by the Obama administration were not by choice.
TRUMP: That's right, because they want to give good healthcare
Q: Over the last four years, you have promised to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but you have never come up with a comprehensive plan to replace ObamaCare.
TRUMP: Yes, I have. Of course I have. I got rid of the individual mandate, which was a big chunk of ObamaCare.
Q: That's not a comprehensive place.
TRUMP: That is absolutely a big thing. That was the worst part of ObamaCare. The individual mandate was the most unpopular aspect of ObamaCare. I got rid of it. And we will protect people. We guaranteed pre-existing conditions, but took away the individual mandate.
BIDEN: He has no plan for healthcare.
TRUMP: Of course we do.
BIDEN: He has none, like almost everything else he talks about. He does not have a plan.
TRUMP: No, I want to give them better healthcare at a much lower price, because ObamaCare is no good.
BIDEN: He won't ever look you in the eye and say that's what he wants to do: "Take it away." He doesn't know how to do that.
TRUMP: We've already fixed it, to an extent. ObamaCare is no good. We made it better. We guaranteed pre-existing conditions, but took away the individual mandate. I had a choice to make, do I let my people run it really well or badly? If I run it badly, they'll probably blame me. But more importantly, I want to help people; I said, "You've got to run it so well." The problem is, no matter how well you run ObamaCare, it's a disaster. It's too expensive. Premiums are too high, that it doesn't work. So we do want to get rid of it. Chris, we want to get rid of that and give something that's cheaper and better.
TRUMP: They've also said the opposite.
BIDEN: No serious person has said the opposite.
TRUMP: Dr. Fauci said the opposite.
BIDEN: He did not say the opposite.
TRUMP: He said very strongly, "Masks are not good." Then he changed his mind. He said, "Masks are good."
FactCheck by Associated Press, Sept. 30: Early on in the outbreak, a number of public health officials urged everyday people not to use masks, fearing a run on already short supplies of personal protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses in hospitals. But that changed as the highly contagious nature of the coronavirus became clear, as well as the fact that it can be spread by tiny droplets breathed into the air by people who may not display any symptoms.
TRUMP: I paid millions of dollars in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax. And let me just tell you, there was a story in one of the papers that paid-
BIDEN: Show us your tax returns.
TRUMP: I paid $38 million one year, I paid $27 million one year.
BIDEN: Show us your tax returns.
TRUMP: You'll see it as soon as it's finished [referring to an ongoing IRS audit, which Trump has claimed as a reason to not release his tax returns]; you'll see it.
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The above quotations are from First Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Sept. 29, 2020.
Click here for other excerpts from First Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Sept. 29, 2020. Click here for other excerpts by Donald Trump. Click here for a profile of Donald Trump.
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