TRUMP: We had the greatest economy in the history of our country last year, including the state of Florida. In Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, in Ohio, every place. We had the greatest economy we ever had. We had to close it down, we saved two million lives. We're opening it up. We have a V-shape and it's coming back. It's coming back very fast.
Every single solitary generation, the dial has moved closer and closer and more and more to inclusion. Slaves came here 400 years ago; except for indigenous people, everyone else is an immigrant. We're a diverse country. And unless we are able to treat people equally, we're just never going to meet our potential. I think the American people want to see that happen. I think they're ready to see it happen. And I'd tell you one thing, if I'm elected president, you will not hear me race baiting. You'll not hear me dividing. You'll hear me trying to unify, and bring people together.
BIDEN: I think there's great reason to be concerned for the LGBT community, something I fought very hard for, for a long time to make sure there's equality across the board.
BIDEN: Yes, if in fact they're involved in community policing, not jump-out squads [raids by police vehicles]. For example, when we had community policing, from the mid-'90s on until till Bush got elected, what happened? Violent crime actually went down precipitously. The cops didn't like the community policing, because you had to have two people in the vehicle, they had to get out of their cars, they had to introduce themselves to who own the local liquor store, who owned the local grocery store, who was the woman on the corner. And what they would do, they'd actually go and give people their phone numbers. A cop would give the phone number.
TRUMP: [I support the bill introduced by Senator] Tim Scott: that was strong in terms of law enforcement, and strong in terms of doing the proper thing by law enforcement. And the Democrats just wouldn't go for it.
BIDEN: Right.
Q:Was it a mistake to support it?
BIDEN: What we did federally was all about the same time for the same crime. We did a study: what happens if you're a Black man and it's the first time you've committed robbery, how long would you go to jail? If you're White man, how long? The Black man would go to jail on average 13 years. White man, two years. We set up a sentencing commission. We didn't set the time. What happened was it became the same time for the same crime.
Q: How do you prevent the kind of policing that results in police-on-civilian tragedies?
BIDEN: One of the things that has to change is so many cops get called into circumstances where somebody is mentally off. That's why we have to provide within police departments psychologists and social workers to go out with the cops on those calls, some of those 911 calls to de-escalate the circumstance, to deal with talking them down.
BIDEN: I provide for a $70 billion for HBCUs for them to be able to have the wherewithal to do what other universities can do, because they don't have the kind of foundational support they need. In our administration, the President allowed me to go down and we awarded a cybersecurity laboratory [at 6 HCBUs via the CECOR program]. The federal government spends billions of dollars a year on universities, because they are the best-kept secret and where most of the major inventions come out of. And so that school now will be able to produce young Black women and men who are going to go into a field of the future that's burgeoning, cybersecurity. And that's what is going to help a great deal.
TRUMP: I have done more for the African American community [including] historically Black colleges and universities. I got them funded. They were on a year to year basis. They could have been put out of business. I got them 10-year funding & financing.
The reason is that they have not, that has not been mastered yet. I met a lot of people in Silicon Valley. The battery technology is increasing significantly so you're going to be able to have, for example, solar on your home and a battery in your basement. So when the sun doesn't shine for five days, you still have enough energy. So, we're making significant progress.
The other thing we're going to do is provide an awful lot of work. It's estimated to put close to a million people to work by weatherizing four million buildings and two million homes, because we'll save tons and tons of energy or billions of barrels of energy over time. And at the same time provide significant employment and a good union wages, prevailing wages.
We should be moving toward finding the new technologies that are going to be able to deal with carbon capture. Ultimately, it's a transition we moved from, to a net zero emission of carbon that we're still going to be able to use if we find the right technology. I think we're going to be able to move in a direction where by the year 2035, we'll be able to have net zero emissions of carbon from the creation of energy so we can move it by dealing with those.
We find ourselves, in the Western Pacific, where we're isolated as well. You have Japan and South Korea at odds with one another. China is making moves. So I would say, we're find ourselves less secure than we've been. I do compliment the president on the deal with Israel recently. But if you take a look, we're not very well trusted around the world. When 17 major nations in the world were asked who they trust more, who's a better leader, and the president came in behind both, the international survey, both behind Putin, as well as Xi. And look what Putin is doing.
BIDEN: I suggested that we should be seeking access to the source of the problem. Trump never pushed that.
Q [to TRUMP]: Why did you only put in place a travel ban from China?
TRUMP: I put it in very early. Joe Biden was two months behind me, and he called me xenophobic and racist.
BIDEN: All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China. There were 44 people on the ground [in China]. All those 44 people came home [as US citizens despite the ban on non-citizens]. In addition to that, I pointed out that I thought in February, I did a piece for USA Today saying, "This is a serious problem." Trump denied it. He said it wasn't. He missed enormous opportunities and kept saying things that weren't true. "It's going to go away by Easter"; "When the summer comes, it's all going to go away like a miracle." He's still saying those things.
BIDEN: Not back then. From March on, I stopped doing big meetings, I started wearing masks. The head of the CDC said, "While we're waiting for a vaccine"--he held up a mask--"You wear this mask, you'll save more lives between now and the end of the year than if we had a vaccine." If we wore masks, we could save 100,000 lives. And what's Trump doing? Nothing. He's still not wearing masks.
Q [to TRUMP]: At White House events, people were not wearing masks.
TRUMP: Well, they do a lot of testing in the White House. I'm okay with masks. I tell people, "wear a mask." But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.
Q: It didn't say that. I know that study.
TRUMP: That's what I heard. Hey, I'm President. I have to be out.
Q: You can see people with a mask, though.
TRUMP: I can, but people with masks are catching it all the time.
BIDEN: I think that healthcare overall is very much in jeopardy as a consequence of the President's going to go directly after this election directly to the Supreme Court within a month to try to get ObamaCare wiped out after 10 million people have already lost their insurance from their employer and wants to take 20 million people out of the system as well, plus 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.
TRUMP: We got rid of the individual mandate on ObamaCare, and now you could actually say it's not ObamaCare because you had to pay a fortune for the privilege of not having to pay for bad health insurance, so we got rid of that. By the way, we're always protecting people with pre-existing conditions, and I can't say that more strongly. The problem with ObamaCare, it's not good. We'd like to terminate it, and we want a much less expensive healthcare that's a much better healthcare.
BIDEN: At a time when the science was saying, and his key people, Dr. Fauci were saying, "You should be taking these precautions."
TRUMP: Dr. Fauci said, "Don't wear a mask," right? Then he changed his mind.
BIDEN: Look, you and I know, the words of a president matter. No matter whether they're good, bad, or indifferent, they matter. And when a president doesn't wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me, when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then people say, "Well, it mustn't be that important." There should be a national standard. Remember what the president said to the governors, "Well, they're on their own; it's not my responsibility. The governors can do what they need to do." It is a presidential responsibility to lead, and he didn't do that. He didn't talk about what needed to be done because he kept worrying, in my view, about the stock market. His barometer of success to the economy is the market.
BIDEN: It depends on the state of the nature of the vaccine when it comes out, and how it's being distributed. But I would think that we should be talking about, depending on the continuation of the spread of the virus, we should be thinking about making it mandatory.
Q [to TRUMP]: You have been having rallies despite being exposed?
TRUMP: As President, I have to be out there. I can't be in a basement. I want to see everybody. And I also say to people all the time, it's risky doing it. [But the White House tests everyone regularly].
BIDEN: Before I came up here, I took another test. I've been taking them every day. If I had not passed that test, I didn't want to come here and expose anybody. And I just think it's just decency, to be able to determine whether or not you're clear. I'm less concerned about me, than the people working in the Secret Service and the camera staff.
BIDEN: Well, I'd say first of all, as my buddy John Lewis said, "It's a sacred opportunity, the right to vote. You can make a difference." If young Black women and men vote, you can determine the outcome of this election. Not a joke. You can do that. Then the next question is, am I worthy of your vote? Can I earn your vote?
BIDEN: An author said "I doubt whether Biden is really Irish. He doesn't hold a grudge." In politics, grudges don't work. They make no sense. We got to change the nature of the way we deal with one another. You don't question another man or woman's motive. You can question their judgment, but not their motive. Even when it's obvious on its face what the motive is, stick to the subject and listen to the other guy.
BIDEN: It could say I'm a lousy candidate, and I didn't do a good job. But I hope that it doesn't say that we are as racially, ethnically, and religiously at odds with one another as it appears the president wants us to be. We got to heal this nation, because we have the greatest opportunity to any country in the world to own the 21st century. And we can't do it divided.
BIDEN: About $1.3 trillion of the $2 trillion in his cuts went to the top one-tenth of 1%. That's what I'm talking about eliminating, not all the tax cuts. You have 91 out of the Fortune 500 companies not paying a single solitary penny. If you raise the corporate tax back to 28%, which is a fair tax, you'd raise one trillion, three hundred billion dollars. If you made sure that people making over $400 grand paid what they did [under] Bush, 39.6%, you would raise another $92 billion.
TRUMP: Our corporate taxes were the highest in the world, and now they're among the lower taxes. They're not the lowest, but they're among the lowest. That means jobs. If we get in, we're going to do the middle income tax package. If [Biden] comes along and raises rates, all those companies that are coming in, they will leave the U.S. so fast your head will spin. We can't let that happen.
BIDEN: A little, but not a whole lot. We find ourselves in a position where we're more isolated in the world than we've ever been.
Peace is breaking out all over the world. Our troops are coming home--
BIDEN: They have more people there now, by the way, than when we left in Afghanistan. And we find ourselves in a situation where Trump has talked to Putin six times, but hasn't said a word to him about bounties on American military's heads in Afghanistan. And NATO is on the risk of being cracked because they doubt whether we're there. You see what's happened in everything from Belarus to Poland, and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world. This president embraces all the thugs in the world. I do compliment the president on the deal with Israel recently. But if you take a look, we're not very well trusted around the world.
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The above quotations are from Second Presidential Debate, Oct. 15, 2020, in Miami, Florida.
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