By TREVIN BRANDT
Staff Writer
No one.
This debate was an absolute disaster. Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden refused to abide by the two-minute rule that states that each candidate gets two minutes to speak on a topic without interruption from the other candidate. Whether the topic was on health care, COVID-19, the economy, racial injustice, or the legitimacy of this year’s election night, both candidates constantly interrupted each other, called each other names, and gave disrespectful glances to each other. Biden told Trump to “shut up” only ten minutes into the debate, and Trump even started arguing with the Fox News commentator, Chris Wallace, on the facts he was providing.
To say this debate was unpresidential is an understatement. It becomes quite evident when watching clips of Obama and McCain or Obama and Romney debate that this is not normal. Ever since 2016, politics have shifted from being about what can better serve our country to a divisive petty fight between the parties about who is right and who is wrong. Even the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debates in 2016 were not nearly as impolite as this one. It is clear that our nation is in the midst of a political storm cloud filled with nothing but hate, anger, and a determination to prove the other side wrong at whatever cost it takes. This cannot be what our country needs right now!
With COVID-19 sending the world into an economic and emotional rut, the best thing we can receive from our leaders–our role models–is kindness, dignity, tolerance, and a willingness to listen. This is not what we are getting from the two most popular presidential candidates this election cycle. If you are married to one side of the political spectrum, maybe none of this matters to you because you have already made a decision on who you are voting for, but for the people in the middle who are just trying to make sense of everything going on, it feels truly shameful to be an American citizen when this is the example our leaders are giving us to live by.