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The First Presidential Debate: ‘Will You Shut Up, Man?’
A digital watch party with Tressie McMillan Cottom, Garance Franke-Ruta, Max Ufberg, and Andrea González-Ramírez
Garance Franke-Ruta: Hi, I’m Garance, executive editor of GEN. By releasing his taxes today, Joe Biden signaled that he wants tonight’s debate to be about economic fairness. Biden paid more taxes than Donald Trump — I mean, didn’t we all? — despite earning significantly less money. Can the candidate from Scranton out-populist the man from Mar-a-Lago? Only time will tell!
Debate day also saw a Trump-campaign-pushed controversy over whether Biden was wearing an earpiece in the 2016 debates, a type of controversy dating back to at least 2000 that recurs each political cycle, as well as the declassification and release by the director of national intelligence of what Politico described as “a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis” — which is to say, a relitigation of 2016.
The Biden campaign sent a letter to Facebook accusing the company of becoming the “nation’s foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process” for not taking down false Trump campaign statements about the election, and Trump ally and foreign lobbyist Rudy Giuliani accused Biden of taking Adderall to enhance his performance in the debate. Biden’s response:
GFR: And here’s Biden’s digital director with a brilliant long-game troll.
GFR: Of note tonight is that this is the first presidential debate since 2004 to feature two white men. And moderator Chris Wallace, at 72, is the youngest man on the stage.
