First Presidential Debate Recap

The first presidential debate has been long anticipation, and the night finally came. Here are some of the highlights of last night…

9:05 PM: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump take the stage as Lester Holt begins his questions on income inequality and a return to economic prosperity.

9:10 PM: Hillary Clinton, in responding to Donald Trump’s economic plan, calls it a new iteration of the failed “trickle down economics” instead of actual help for the poor.

9:12 PM: Donald Trump decries NAFTA as inefficient, due to the fact that Clinton and others have not done anything for – in his view – years. However, he completely avoided Holt’s question on his plan to actually fix anything.

9:17 PM: “Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese” – Hillary Clinton

9:21 PM: It seems that Trump wants to blame Hillary Clinton for NAFTA….

9:24 PM: Hillary Clinton has added a fact checker to her website. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/literallytrump/

9:27 PM: After the first half-hour or so, it seems that Trump just echoes standard Republican statements while Clinton actually has crafted original policy statements.

9:28 PM: “By the end of the night I’m going to be blamed for everything that ever happened.” – Clinton
“Why not?” – Trump

9:33 PM: Donald Trump pledges to release his tax returns (before the audit is completed) if Hillary Clinton releases her 33,000 deleted emails.

9:36 PM: Hillary Clinton admits she made a mistake in her email usage.

9:41 PM: “What happened in business could be really bad for government” – Hillary Clinton. This will hold true for Trump – after all, once he gets bored with governing, he can’t just leave the country in shambles.

9:44 PM: Holt moves on to race relations. Hillary Clinton answers that we need to take guns out of the hands of those on the streets, while Trump answers “law and order” and doesn’t offer a solution.

9:48 PM: “The police are afraid to do anything” – Donald Trump. Based on the number of shootings, I think not.

9:49 PM: Donald Trump says that stop-and-frisk was a good thing, despite it was based on racial stereotypes. His argument is that the people who have the guns are of those races…He’s also repeated “law and order, law and order” so many times…

9:56 PM: In response to Donald Trump’s comment on the No-Fly List, 3rd Place Candidate Gary Johnson tweeted: FYI, there are sitting Members of Congress on the “no fly” list #debates

9:58 PM: Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton and Democratic Politicians of pandering to their votes and not doing anything.

9:59 PM: “I think Donald Trump is criticizing me for not preparing for the debate. And I have.” – Clinton

10:03 PM: Hillary Clinton accuses Trump of racist conduct not just against Obama, but against African-Americans in general based on institutionalized discrimination.

10:05 PM: “When you try to act holier-than-thou, it doesn’t work.” If Donald Trump followed his own advice, the campaign might be going in a whole different direction.

10:06 PM: Move on to cyber security

10:13 PM: Hillary Clinton presented her plan to take out ISIS, proposes to take out the leadership first, as she did with Bin Laden

10:17 PM: Donald Trump feels that NATO is obsolete, but perhaps because it isn’t doing what he wants them to do?

10:19 PM: “Mr. Trump, a lot of these are judgment questions; you supported the war in Iraq.” – Lester Holt after Trump accuses Hillary and (Bush’s) removal of troops from Iraq.

10:22 PM: “I have a much better temperament than [Clinton] does” – Donald Trump.

10:26 PM: Lester Holt begins the last topic on nuclear weapons.

10:29 PM: Donald Trump predicts that the deal with Iran will cause nuclear programs instead of helping us.

10:30 PM: “Donald Trump never tells us what he’s going to do…He has a secret plan, but his only secret is that he has no plan.” – Hillary Clinton

10:32 PM: “Hillary has experience, but it’s bad experience” – Donald Trump, after applause towards Hillary for her giving multiple examples of her stamina.

10:37 PM: As the debate closes, Clinton notes that the election is the will of the people – the primary concept of democracy. Trump skirts the question by talking about deportees but accedes he’ll support her if she wins.

After the debate, the NBC news personalities noted that “Donald Trump showed his lack of preparation” and that “he didn’t draw anyone over the line but kept his existing constituency.” In my opinion, Clinton won this round. As I sign off, though, I’d like to say one thing, a very important hashtag that surfaced during the course of the debate that would really help the country: #letgarydebate.

Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of the Omega as a whole.