WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump exchanged sharp criticisms on Thursday in the first debate of the 2024 election campaign. Biden and Trump made false and misleading claims during presidential debate but the former President did so far more than President Biden, just like in their debates in 2020. Trump made over 30 false claims, western and US media reported.
Migrant Crime
Trump inaccurately claimed that under Biden, “we don’t have borders anymore.” He said, “Because of his ridiculous, insane, and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen. We call it ‘migrant crime.’ I call it ‘Biden migrant crime.'”
In response to criticisms over record border crossings and a stalled bipartisan immigration bill, Biden signed an executive order earlier this month to temporarily close the border to asylum seekers once certain daily limits are reached. This has led to “increased enforcement at the border,” according to Nicole Hallett, director of the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Despite a few high-profile incidents, such as the killing of a university student in Georgia, there is “no evidence” of the migrant crime wave described by Trump, Hallett told media. “Crime is down across the country, even as migration has increased,” she said.
Violent and property crimes are near their lowest levels in decades, according to 2022 FBI data. Other research also indicates migrants commit fewer violent crimes than US citizens. A Cato Institute report published this week found migrants are less likely to be convicted of murder in Texas.
Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, said there is also no evidence supporting Trump’s debate claims that prisoners and people from mental institutions are flooding across the southern US border.
Inflation blame
Both Trump and Biden deflected blame for rising prices by criticizing each other’s economic policies. “He causes inflation. I gave him a country with essentially no inflation,” Trump stated, repeating his favorite – but false – claim about creating the greatest economy in US history. Biden countered by saying Trump “decimated the economy” and there were “no jobs” when he took office. Both candidates misled by omitting the impact of Covid-19 on the economy.
When Trump left office, inflation was around 1.4 percent as the country continued to battle the virus. Unemployment was about 6.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from its peak of 14.8 percent in April 2020 after the outbreak. Inflation began to rise in April 2021 as the country reopened. It continued to increase under Biden’s presidency, peaking at around nine percent in June 2022 before falling to its current level of about three percent. Several pandemic-related factors have contributed to this trend, including emergency spending packages under both Trump and Biden, a supply crunch, and the war in Ukraine.
Rewriting January 6
Trump attempted to deflect blame for the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, for which he was impeached, by pointing to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down,” he falsely claimed. Pelosi’s team denied being aware of any request for National Guard assistance until the Capitol was under siege by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Pelosi would not have had the authority to reject the National Guard’s activation had Trump authorized it. The District of Columbia National Guard “reports only to the president,” its website states.
Trump also reiterated his assertion that “the fraud and everything else was ridiculous” in the 2020 election he lost to Biden, claims refuted by officials from both parties. Dozens of lawsuits aiming to overturn the election failed, while audits and recounts in battleground states confirmed Biden’s win.
