Biden breaks through in 'mud wrestling' debate with Trump | National Catholic Reporter
by Michael Sean winters
President Donald Trump had a clear objective going into last night's debate: He needed to define Joe Biden as an unacceptable choice for the voters. His convention tried to do that, and failed. His barrage of tweets has tried to do that, and failed. He needed to make sure that at the end of the 90-minute debate, people saw Biden as a broken man incapable of leading the country.
Biden, like all challengers, needed to keep the focus on the incumbent, not least because of the dire straits in which the country finds itself. He needed to strike a most difficult balance between appealing to his base and appearing like a man who can unite a country divided and exhausted by Trump's antics.
Instead of a debate, the country witnessed the first ever debate that was not a debate at all, but a professional wrestling match in which the combatants happened to be wearing suits and ties. From the very beginning, the president kept interrupting Biden and within 20 minutes, the moderator, Fox News' Chris Wallace, was visibly and self-admittedly exasperated by the president's continued interruptions.
Halfway through the debacle, however, one sentence broke through the disjointed exchanges and countless interruptions. The president was asked about The New York Times' reporting on his federal income taxes. He denied the central claim of the Times' story and pivoted to allegations about Biden's son Hunter making millions of dollars from foreign corporations. Several minutes of mud wrestling ensued, but then Biden said something which may have won him the election. Looking into the camera, he said, "This is not about my family or his family. It is about your family."
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