By: Alyssa Abbonizio, Lion’s Eye Staff Writer, aqa5498@psu.edu
For the first time in history, a female has won the presidential nomination and participated in a presidential debate.
Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced off in the first of three presidential debates on September 27, 2016. With an average of 84 million viewers making it the most watched debate in history according to Nielsen, the nominees debated on three topics: America’s direction, achieving prosperity, and securing America. The debate started out talking about jobs and how each candidate will bring back jobs to the U.S.
“We need to stop companies from leaving the United States and firing all their people,” said Trump. “We need to re-negotiate trade deals and stop countries from stealing our companies and our jobs.”
He mentioned how Carrier Air Conditioning fired 1,400 people because they’re moving their company to Mexico. He wants to bring companies that went overseas back to the United States and to get the American people their jobs back. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, wants fair trade deals and says we need a tax system that works for everyone.
“Donald’s version would give the biggest tax cuts to the top 1%,” said Clinton. “We can do more for the middle class, we can invest more in our education and our future will be better off.”
Trump rebutted with, “how will you bring back companies? Their current government is giving incentives, taking our jobs and doing things we don’t do. When we sell into Mexico, there’s a tax. When they sell into us, there’s no tax,” explained Trump.
“The recession happened because the government slashed taxes to the rich and 9 million people lost their jobs,” Clinton counter argued. “We can’t go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.”
As the debate went on, Clinton’s email scandal came up and she admitted to making a mistake saying, “There are no excuses. It was a mistake and I take responsibility for it.”
“It was not a mistake, it was done purposely,” claimed Trump. “You have your staff taking the fifth and it’s disgraceful and the Country thinks it’s disgraceful too.”
One of the biggest topics of the night was race relations. Moderator Lester Holt asked questions regarding race relations in the country, including police shooting and killing black people.
“Race remains a significant challenge in our country,” explained Clinton. “We have to restore trust between communities and police; we have to work to make sure cops are using the best training and techniques and that there well prepared to use force only when necessary.”
She’s calling for criminal justice reform and wants to tackle the plague of gun violence. On the other hand, Trump says we need law and order. He agrees with Clinton that we need better relationships between the police and community but his way around race relations is to do stop and frisk to regain law and order in the country.
“We have a situation where inner cities, blacks and Hispanics living in hell,” Trump began. “Stop and frisk worked really well in New York and brought down murders from 2,200 to 500. Communities in inner cities have been abused and used to get votes by democrats.”
Clinton rebutted his statement by saying, “Stop and frisk was found unconstitutional because it was ineffective. It didn’t do what it needed to do.”
Lester Holt ended the debate with one final question: Are you willing to accept the outcome of the election? Both candidates said they would accept the outcome and that it’s up to the people to get out and vote. So remember to vote on November 8.