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      in Elections

      Trump and Biden in bitterly personal clash at first presidential debate

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      US elections 2020

      Candidates throw insults amid arguments over healthcare, coronavirus and supreme court
      First presidential debate: follow live

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      ‘This is so unpresidential’: tempers flare in first US presidential debate – video

      Donald Trump and Joe Biden sparred bitterly during the first presidential debate of the general election on Tuesday night, hurling personal insults as they clashed over healthcare, the coronavirus and the supreme court.
      Ignoring the rules, the candidates repeatedly interrupted each other, with Biden losing his patience at one point and retorting: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”
      At another point, Trump wrestled with the moderator, the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, complaining: “I guess I’m debating you, not him. But that’s OK, I’m not surprised.”
      “The fact is that everything he’s said so far is simply a lie,” Biden said. “I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar.”
      Trump, pressed on new revelations that he avoided paying federal taxes for years and paid only $750 in 2016 and 2017, claimed he had paid “millions of dollars” in taxes in those years. He bragged that he took advantage of tax loopholes and that as a successful businessman he didn’t “want to pay taxes”.
      Hours before the debate, held in Cleveland, Ohio, Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, released their 2019 tax returns. Breaking decades of precedent, Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the public.
      Both campaigns have spent weeks preparing for the matchup, which was expected to draw millions of viewers. In a segment on the coronavirus, Biden hammered Trump over his handling of the pandemic, which has claimed nearly 205,000 American lives.
      “Do you believe for a moment what he’s telling you, in light of all the lies he’s telling you, about Covid?” Biden asked.
      Ahead of the debate, Trump’s allies attempted to cast Biden as incoherent and fanned baseless online conspiracy theories that Biden requires cue cards or an earpiece to answer questions.
      In a statement, Trump’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, alleged that Biden’s campaign had reneged on an agreement to a “pre-debate inspection for electronic earpieces” and that his team sought “multiple breaks during the debate, which President Trump doesn’t need”. Pointing to Trump’s demand that Biden submit to a drug test, a suggestion Biden laughed off, Murtaugh said it was clear the president’s opponent was looking for a “safety net” ahead of the debate.
      Biden’s campaign flatly denied the accusations.
      Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, the deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, observed that Trump’s team appeared “concerned that he will not do well tonight” and were “laying the groundwork for how they’re going to lie about why”.
      The debate was centered around six pre-determined topics, which included: the candidates’ records, the Covid-19 crisis, the economy, the supreme court, race and violence in American cities and the integrity of the election. Each topic will receive 15 minutes of discussion during the 90-minute affair.
      The debate was arguably Trump’s best opportunity to reset the presidential race in which he is currently behind. The economy is the sole issue where Trump retains a slight advantage over Biden, though even there his edge is slipping.
      Majorities of Americans consistently disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and believe his response to the racial justice protests have only made matters worse.
      On election security, Trump may face scrutiny for his baseless attacks on mail-in balloting and attempts to undermine confidence in the electoral system. Polls show that Americans have lost faith in the electoral process, a sign that his efforts to sow doubt ahead of the election are resonating.
      Performance is equally, if not more, important than the discussion. And in both style and substance, Biden and Trump are opposites.
      Trump, ever the showman, has used past debates to shock and awe the audience with his unorthodox approach. The approach worked in 2016, when Trump defeated his better-prepared opponents. Biden, by contrast, delivered steady albeit less memorable performances in many of the Democratic primary debates. And yet, Biden emerged victorious from a field of agile debaters.
      Looming over the debate is whether anything either candidate says or does on Tuesday night will sway voters. While nearly three in four voters said they planned to watch the debate on Tuesday night, according to a recent Monmouth University poll, just 3% of voters said it was “very likely” to affect their vote in November.

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      in US Politics

      Tensions and insults in the battle for Florida lay bare America's divisions

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      Observer special report

      Tensions and insults in the battle for Florida lay bare America’s divisions

      People stand for the Pledge of Allegiance before the arrival of US president Donald Trump for ‘The Great American Comeback Rally’ at Cecil Airport, Florida on 24 September.
      Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

      Decisions in this vital swing state are made in two different realities, one adherent to facts and science, the other rooted in conspiracies and political dogma
      by Oliver Laughland in Florida

      Main image:
      People stand for the Pledge of Allegiance before the arrival of US president Donald Trump for ‘The Great American Comeback Rally’ at Cecil Airport, Florida on 24 September.
      Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

      If you wanted a symbol for Donald Trump’s complete takeover of the Republican party, you could do little better than a nondescript shopping mall on the outskirts of Largo in west Florida.
      This is a usually quiet intersection in Florida’s quintessential bellwether county, Pinellas, which has voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1980 (bar the disputed 2000 race won by George W Bush).
      But eight months ago Cliff Gephart, an enthusiastic Trump supporter and local entrepreneur, transformed a vacant lot – formerly a strip club – into a thriving coffee shop devoted to the president. Business at Conservative Grounds is roaring, despite the pandemic, with hundreds and, they claim, occasionally over a thousand customers, dropping by each day for a cup of coffee, a chat about politics and to purchase from a plethora of Trump themed merchandise. No-one is social distancing or wearing a facemask.

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      Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video
      In 2016, the narrative of the so-called “secretive Trump voter” went part of the way to explaining the billionaire property magnate’s unexpected pathway to the White House. But now, in Pinellas as in many parts of the country, Trump supporters are out in force, unafraid, empowered and organised.
      Every section inside this place is designed for social media posting – there’s a second amendment wall filled with decommissioned firearms, a gumball machine stocked with spent ammunition (it doesn’t vend), and a coffee machine decorated with slurs against Democrats. At the back is a scaled reproduction of the Oval Office itself, complete with a replica Resolute Desk, cardboard cutouts of the President and first lady, and a Martin Luther King bust, wearing a red Trump 2020 cap.
      I ask Gephart, a heavily built, stubbled 50-year-old, whether he thinks people might be offended by the latter. (Martin Luther King’s children are staunch critics of the president, and Trump declined to celebrate the life of civil rights icon John Lewis after his death in July.)
      “Everything offends everybody these days,” he says. More

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      in Elections

      Pennsylvania politicians go topless to warn voters: don't mail in 'naked ballots'

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      Bethany Hallam thought the best way to dress up her message that votes are in danger of not being counted in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania was to strip it down to the basics, so she did – literally.“Do you want to get naked to save democracy?” fellow Allegheny county council member Olivia Bennett said Hallam asked her a few days ago.“I said: OK!” Bennett recalled, laughing.The two councilwomen recruited a third “badass”, state representative-elect Emily Kinkead, and posed for the camera, shedding their clothes and then posting the results on social media with their breasts hidden behind images of the “secrecy envelope” being sent out to Pennsylvanians along with their ballots for postal voting.If voters mail in their ballot without putting it first in the secrecy envelope and then putting that inside the outer, addressed envelope, the authorities will not count the vote and it will be discarded as a “naked ballot”. So Hallam and her allies wanted to warn voters of the threat.With Pennsylvania not normally allowing mass mail-in voting, and with the arcane rule about the extra envelope, officials warn that up to 100,000 votes mailed in the state during this coronavirus pandemic could end up being invalidated as naked ballots.As every ballot matters in a vital swing state with super-thin voting margins Hallam hit on the drastic idea of getting nude herself to highlight the issue.“Immediately when I heard the term naked ballots, and being a woman in the male-dominated environment of politics, where they are always trying to control our bodies, I thought, ‘Why not take some control back? And also get the voters’ attention,” Hallam told the Guardian.Hallam is the Democratic councilwoman at large for Allegheny county, which includes Pittsburgh. Obviously she wants Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump to the White House in November – and Trump won Pennsylvania by only around 44,000 votes in 2016 – but she said she’s keen to remind all voters that their vote should count, for the presidency and in a sheaf of down-ballot contests, too.“Races are sometimes decided by a handful of votes,” she said.Hallam said she had fun posing joyfully for her campaign to make every vote count.“It was empowering. And to stand alongside two other badass elected officials that I enjoy working with … we were having a blast and also helping voters,” she said.Hallam said some other Democrats have pledged to join in, some more elected women have planned to pose for similar pictures on Monday and, later in the week, some men. She’s extended the invitation to Republicans, but none has taken her up on it yet. And she wants the general public to join in.Since she, Bennett and Kinkead posted on a variety of social media platforms on Saturday more than a million people have viewed the posts.There have been many supportive comments but of course some backlash.Hallam said some guy called her parents’ home at 2am saying, “Your daughter’s tits are all over the internet”, which, technically, they aren’t.“And someone posted, ‘I hope you socialist sluts get raped’,” Hallam said.The women were neither surprised nor shaken.Some have commented on Bennett’s visible tattoo of Tinkerbell flying over the logo of the Pittsburgh Steelers.Bennett explained that she has always loved Disney and is a lifelong super fan of the Steelers, but added she’s been boycotting the NFL for four years since the league froze out Colin Kaepernick for his campaign to take a knee during the national anthem before games in order to highlight racism and police brutality.Meanwhile, she said she didn’t hesitate when Hallam asked her to disrobe for her no-naked-ballots drive.The two councilwomen often work together on their shared priority policies around criminal justice reform and police accountability, protecting the environment, promoting LGBTQ equality and protecting workers’ rights.Hallam beat out a 20-year council incumbent last year, running on a progressive platform, and also her experience as a millennial in recovery from drug dependency, which stemmed from being prescribed opioids for back-to-back sports injuries as a high schooler, and later spending time behind bars, including six months in county jail, for related offenses.Hallam said their naked ballots campaign is especially important right now because Pennsylvania primary races earlier this year allowed naked ballots to be counted, but then the state supreme court ruled that in November’s election, ballots not mailed in the additional secrecy envelope would not be counted.Hallam said: “It’s confusing unless you read the small print, and no-one does that. So I had an idea … ” More

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      in US Politics

      Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video

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      13:55

      Donald Trump’s presidency has changed American society. With six weeks until the most important election in a generation, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone are crossing the US to uncover the fault lines that underpin American politics. In the vital swing state of Florida, where disinformation on Covid-19 has spread unchecked, the race for the White House is tightening by the day
      To stay up to date on coronavirus news around the world follow the Guardian’s blog. 
       For further information on the dangers of the virus visit the CDC’s website.

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