CLEVELAND (AP) — The first face-off for President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden was over a clash concerning a president’s prerogative to put push through an election-year Supreme Court nominee.
Trump says during a debate Tuesday night in Cleveland that Republicans “won the election and therefore we have the right to choose” Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Trump added that he felt Democrats “wouldn’t even think about not doing it” if given the chance to nominate a justice with just weeks until the election.
Biden and other Democrats have decried Trump’s nomination of a new justice given Republicans’ refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s selection following the 2016 death of Antonin Scalia. Biden didn’t mention that during the debate, however.
Biden says that Barrett seems like “a very fine person” but that her nomination after “tens of thousands of people have already voted” was troubling.
Later in the debate, the topic of race in America was discussed.
President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden were making their pitches to win over Black voters in the coming election, with Biden mockingly questioning: “This man, this man is a savior of African Americans? This man has done virtually nothing.”
Biden says that 1 in 1,000 African Americans has died because of the coronavirus, and if Trump doesn’t do something quickly, it will be 1 in 500.
Trump turned the discussion from COVID-19 to a crime bill passed in 1994 that Biden helped write and get passed that, among other things, increased the penalties for certain drug offenses.
Trump says “I’m letting people out of jail now,” and asserted that Biden had treated the Black community “about as bad as anybody in this country.”
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