Thursday night Presidential debate was the last chance for the Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democrat rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, to appeal to a large nationwide audience. Both candidates seemed to be aware of how much was at stake.
While the two men had their moments, Trump fared much better with an unusually calm performance, as per the analysis by DW correspondent Carla Bleiker.
Donald Trump acted significantly more presidential than in the previous debate, staying calm and using familiar arguments to attack Joe Biden during his turn to speak.
On the other hand “Sleepy Joe” as Trump and his supporters refer to him seemed to be much awake, argued passionately argued against Trump’s policies in grey areas such as immigration and handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Debates round of verbal sparring was a significant change of pace from the chaotic first debate between the two candidates.
“It was definitely better than the last one,” J. Miles Coleman, election analyst with the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told DW. “Trump was more message-focused and there were no fights with the moderator.”
This marked a huge difference from the last debate.
Rules changed from the last debate
In the first debate, Trump constantly interrupted Biden, who eventually picked the same habit in the course of the debate, but not quite as bad. According to reports by Washington Post, the incumbent interrupted the moderator or Biden 71 times in the last debate while Biden interrupted 22 times.
To prevent that from happening again, each candidate had their mic muted in the initial two-minute answer of his opponent in each of the six segments.
President Trump made it clear before the debate that he wasn’t happy about the change in rules.
“President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide an advantage to their favored candidate,” a statement from the president’s reelection campaign read.
On the contrary, during the debate, Trump seemed to not have an issue with the moderator though.
“So far, I respect very much the way you’re handling this,” the president told moderator Kristen Welker at one point during the debate when she let him respond to Biden’s argument Biden.
- Joe Biden Empties Bank Accounts On Last Minute Campaigns As Trump Remains Stingy
- Joe Biden Leads President Trump By 17 Points As US Elections Enter Final Stage
- Trump Tax Scandal Takes New Twist Revealing His Money Stashed In China
- Republican senators voice fears of a painful Trump loss
A win for Trump
At the end of the debate, President Trump came out looking somehow stronger than his viral.
Coleman, an associate editor of Sabato’s Crystl Ball said, the President won in the sense that his debate performance wasn’t a debacle
“We have set the bar so low. Now is it going to change a lot of minds? I don’t know,” Coleman said as reported by the DW.
Most American voters say the debate came too late to change their minds, either way, more than 42 million Americans have already cast their ballot, registering a record turn-out for early voting.
