Minutes after the first bipartisan debate of the 2016 election season ended, headlines and news crawls were filled with statements like “Clinton and Trump clash over jobs, taxes, birtherism,” (CNN, 2016). Those three sweeping categories essentially sum up the focuses of the debate, as moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt.
Prior to the debate, political commentators stated that Hilary Clinton held a slight lead in recent polls, but the importance, they claimed, does not lie in where the polls are, but where the polls are headed. After an hour and a half of insults, conditional agreements, and blatant discrepancies (otherwise known as ‘the debate’), a CNN poll of admittedly a more liberal than conservative sample of 1,000 people showed that Clinton won the debate by 62 percent to Trump’s 27 percent.
Check out our rundown of the debate’s best question and answer segments.
Question: “Why are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American workers?”
Hilary Clinton: According to Clinton, we have to “build an economy that works for everyone,” and the best way to do that is to create jobs in infrastructure, support small businesses, raise the minimum wage, and advocate for equal pay for equal work. She went on to discuss her belief that the rich should be taxed more heavily than the lower or middle classes in order to grow our economy as a whole.
Donald Trump: During this segment, Trump attempted to argue that “our jobs are fleeing the country,” specifically in the direction of China and Mexico. He claimed that he would be reducing taxes for both small and large businesses from 35 percent to 15 percent and that companies will come back to America to build, grow, and expand.
Question: “Secretary Clinton, you’re calling for a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. I’d like you to further defend that. And, Mr. Trump, you’re calling for tax cuts for the wealthy. I’d like you to defend that. And this next two-minute answer goes to you, Mr. Trump.”
Donald Trump: In this segment, Donald Trump defended tax cuts for the wealthy by saying that those people were going to be the ones to put billions of dollars into companies and back into our economies, but they are leaving this country because taxes are too high.
Hilary Clinton: Here, Clinton supported her ideas about how taxing the wealthy and “investing in the middle class… will really boost the economy.” She stated that her goals were to have paid family leave, earned sick days, debt-free college, and affordable childcare.
Question: “Race has been a big issue in this campaign, and one of you is going to have to bridge a very wide and bitter gap. So how do you heal the divide?
Hilary Clinton: Clinton’s plan to heal “the divide” among not only races but racially divided institutions in this country is to make sure everyone is “respected by the law, and everyone… respect[s] the law” through criminal justice reform. This reform, according to Clinton, starts with addressing gun violence, addressing implicit biases among the police, and addressing mental health problems on the streets.
Donald Trump: Trump’s solution can best be summed up with the words “law and order,” as this is the phrase he continuously repeated throughout the segment. He recognized the plight of “African Americans and Hispanics” in inner cities, and implied that they would be helped by “bringing back law and order.”
Question: “Our institutions are under cyber-attack and our secrets are being stolen… Who’s behind it? And how do we fight it?”
Hilary Clinton: According to Clinton, cyber security is one of the biggest challenges facing the next president. She expressed major concerns over Russia being a major source of computer hackers, and stated that we as a country do not want to use “the kinds of tools that we have,” but that citizens will be defended.
Donald Trump: Trump refuted that Russia should be our most concern, because the hackers “could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people.” The reason that we don’t know who it was specifically, according to Trump, is due to a loss of control during the Obama administration.
Question: “Tell us specifically how you would prevent homegrown attacks by American citizens.”
Donald Trump: Trump’s solution is getting NATO to go into the Middle East, as well as into surrounding countries, and “knock the hell out of ISIS.”
Hilary Clinton: To stop homegrown terrorism, Clinton said that we need to search for every bit of information, work more closely with our allies, and cooperate with Muslim nations and American Muslim communities because many of our Middle Eastern allies are Muslim majority nations.
There are clear cut differences in Clinton and Trump’s beliefs about how we as a country should reach our goals, but the goals themselves seem to line up. Catch the next two debates on Sunday, October 9th and on Wednesday, October 19th. An annotated transcript of last night’s debate can be found here.