Enterprise watches 2016’s first US presidential debate
Disclaimer on our coverage of the US presidential debate: We are biased. We have always been biased. All media everywhere is biased, but we freely admit to it. What feels like a long time ago, we used to be very tough on Sec. Clinton especially with regard to the email scandal. But when a greater threat emerged to the very fabric of reality, we were forced to adjust our risk assessment.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an individual going by the alias “Donald Trump” went head to head Monday evening (early Tuesday morning our time) in the season’s first presidential debate to an expected viewership of 100 mn people in the United States alone. The debate was moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, who appeared most of the time to simply be a bystander as Trump steamrolled over him, interrupted him and interrupted Sec. Clinton. Holt was also unable to keep the audience from continually hooting and hollering as if it were a crowd at a WWE match.
A close race in a post-factual age: To prepare, Clinton relied on longtime aide Philippe Reines as a stand-in for Trump in her mock debates. Trump, on the other hand, said he simply watched old debates of Sec. Clinton going up against US President Barack Obama in 2008. Clinton was able to use the difference in preparation as an applause line to her favor when Trump bragged that he had “been all over the place,” in reference to his tireless campaigning around the United States. “You decided to stay home,” he said dismissively to Clinton. “And that’s ok.” Clinton was able to interrupt: “I think Donald just accused me of preparing for the debate. And that’s right. And I prepared to be president too, and that’s a good thing,” to which the audience erupted into applause. Going into the debate, both candidates are tied in a virtual dead heat in the polls, with over 20% of the electorate undecided. On questions of honesty, Politifact has rated over 70% of Trump’s public statements made throughout the course of his campaign that they have examined as false, while the percentage of Sec. Clinton’s examined statements deemed as false at 28%. Despite this, a poll found that 41% of voters ‘felt’ that Trump was more honest, while only 31% thought Clinton is better at being honest, in what is simply further proof that the very nature of existence is devoid of meaning.
Honesty and fact checking have become a key focus of this campaign, more so than in any other presidential campaign in memory, as PBS, Bloomberg, and the New York Times all provided live fact-checking of last night’s debate. Even Holt occasionally attempted to fact check Trump in real time, with little success in getting the Republican contender to admit he had been caught in a lie. As Clinton confronted Trump with statements he has made in the past, such as his claim that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, Trump interrupted to say that he did not say that. However, his tweet from 2012 where he wrote: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive” is still available online for everyone to see — though some outlets (including the initial version of this post an hour ago) incorrectly stated that the tweet had been deleted as the debate progressed.
While we unfortunately neither have the time nor the space to continue much further before this morning’s dispatch, we will give you some of our favorite quotes and exchanges below. For a complete transcript, see NPR which interspersed their live-blogging with real time fact-checking. However, please keep in mind they, like us, were under a time constraint and their transcript is imperfect and filled with errors which will likely be fixed as they are able to review the video.
Favorite quotes and exchanges:
Donald Trump: “Secretary… Clinton? Is that what I should call you?”
Sec. Clinton: “Where were we eight years ago? In the worst recession since the Great Depression… Donald Trump rooted for the housing crisis. In 2006, he said he hoped for a collapse—”
Donald Trump: [interrupting] “That’s business!”
Donald Trump: “And when you heard what I said about it [the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement] all of a sudden you were against it.”
Sec. Clinton: “Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality.” [audience laughs]
At one point, Holt fact checked Trump’s fictitious claim that he would not release his taxes due to being under audit, with Holt citing the IRS statement that confirmed that Trump could release his returns. Trump then immediately contradicted himself by saying he would release his taxes when Sec. Clinton released the 33k emails she deleted while serving as Secretary of State, to the hooting and applause of a segment of the audience.
Donald Trump: “I have a much better temperament than she does.”
Donald Trump: “I did a great service, not only for the country but even for the president in getting him to produce his birth certificate.”
Our judgment on the winner: Judging solely on who has a better grasp of the issues, and who made more of an attempt to present those issues honestly, and of course acknowledging our own pre-existing bias, Sec. Clinton not only won the debate, but overcame some of the concerns some had on their expectations of her performance against Trump. The problem, of course, as we have stated repeatedly, is that the world is firmly in a post-factual age, and if the facts and the candidates’ grasp of the facts had a significant sway over the masses, Trump would have never gotten this far in the first place.
Find the full video of the debate here, running time: approximately 95 minutes.