The current president of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden, and his predecessor and rival in the November election, Republican Donald Trump, will hold the first debate of the 2024 race for the White House from 10 pm (Brasília time) this Thursday (27) at the CNN studios in Atlanta, in the state of Georgia.
For now, only one other debate is scheduled, on September 10, organized by ABC News.
Biden and Trump repeat the 2020 electoral confrontation, when the Black Lives Matter movement protests and the Covid-19 pandemic were probably the most important themes of the campaign period. Check out what the main topics of the first debate should now be:
Illegal immigration
With the economic, political and social crisis in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, the southern border of the United States had a record number of people trying to enter the country illegally in fiscal year 2023 (from October 2022 to September 2023) : almost 2.5 million records.
In fiscal year 2024, there are already almost 1.7 million arrests from October 2023 to May.
Much criticized by the Republican opposition, which has pointed out the incompetence of the Democratic administration in monitoring the border with Mexico, Biden has announced policies related to migration in this campaign, ranging from stricter measures to nods to migrants, who have mostly voted for his party in recent years. elections.
Last week, the president announced a new program that will allow more than half a million migrants living in the country without legal status to regularize their situation, a measure that will mainly benefit people married to American citizens.
On the other hand, just a few weeks earlier, Biden had imposed a series of restrictions on access to asylum at the border.
Trump, who was elected in 2016 on a strong platform against illegal immigration, is now proposing plans ranging from mass deportations to the construction of large centers to detain undocumented migrants.
However, last week, the Republican promised that, if he returns to the White House, he will grant automatic permanent residency (the famous “green card”) to immigrants who graduate from an American university.
Economy
Although the United States economy is showing a good rate of growth and job creation, inflation has been a major problem during the Biden administration.
In January 2021, when the Democrat took office, the country’s 12-month accumulated inflation was 1.4%. In June 2022, it peaked at 9.1%, which forced the Fed, the American central bank, to raise interest rates.
In May this year, the indicator was much lower, at 3.3%, but still a high index for a country accustomed to annual inflation of around 2%.
Ability to preside over the country
With Biden’s gaffes in evidence on social media, his (at 81 years old) or Trump’s (78 years old) ability to command the most important country in the world should also be a topic of debate.
In May, the Republican said that the Democrat is “mentally unfit” to be president. Biden has tried to get back at him: He ridiculed Trump for calling his wife, Melania, “Mercedes” at a conservative event in February.
This month, Trump said at an event in Detroit that his opponent should take a cognitive test, but he misspelled the name of the doctor who gave him the test when he was president. Biden’s campaign immediately highlighted the episode on the social network X.
Legal problems
This year’s presidential election will have two unprecedented components in the political history of the United States: never before has the son of a sitting American president been criminally convicted, and never has a former president of the country been found guilty in a criminal case.
This month, Hunter Biden, the Democratic president’s son, was found guilty of illegal gun charges by a Delaware jury.
At the end of May, Trump had been found guilty by a jury in New York on 34 charges that he had falsified company records to hide a payment of US$130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels, so that she would not reveal it before the election. 2016, a relationship they both had ten years before. Sentences in both cases have not yet been announced.
Biden and Trump are expected to explore accusations of misconduct in Thursday’s debate, but in different ways.
While the president has already called the Republican a “convicted criminal” in his campaign advertisements (Trump is a defendant in three other criminal cases, which are not expected to be tried until the election), the Republican minimized Hunter’s conviction and another pending case. , against the Democrat’s son (Hunter Biden will be tried in September in California, where he was accused of not paying US$1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019).
After Hunter’s conviction in Delaware, the Trump campaign said that Biden’s family would have more serious crimes to answer for, in reference to Hunter’s overseas business dealings when his father was vice president (2009-2017). Trump is likely to focus on this point in Thursday’s debate.
Abortion
This year’s presidential election in the United States will be the first since the US Supreme Court overturned, in 2022, the case law of Roe vs. Wade, in 1973, which had determined that American states could not have laws prohibiting abortion before the so-called viability (when the fetus is able to survive outside the uterus, around 24 weeks of gestation).
Last year’s decision by the American Supreme Court returned to American states the freedom to legislate as they preferred regarding abortion. As such, many Republican-run states have reactivated or implemented stricter pro-life laws.
To attract pro-abortion voters, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have tried to hold Trump accountable for overturning Roe v. Wade. Wade – three Supreme Court justices appointed by the Republican during his term (2017-2021) voted to review the 1973 decision.
In April, Trump said that each state must legislate on abortion, implying that he would not seek, if elected, a national law on the subject.
Conservative and pro-life movements expected Trump to defend the adoption of a strict national law on abortion, but this did not happen.
Ukraine
Military aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia was a factor of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans.
Earlier this month, in a meeting in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden criticized the opposition for the delay of several months in approving a new package worth almost US$61 billion, which finally received approval from the US House in April. after months of lockdown.
“Some of the very conservative members [da Câmara dos Representantes] they were blocking it, but we finally managed to pass it,” said Biden.
Previously, the American Congress had already approved the sending of US$ 113.4 billion in aid to Ukraine for the war against Russia.
However, the allocation of more resources was blocked for months by the Republican opposition in the Chamber (majority in the house), which questioned the Biden administration’s excessive spending and demanded tougher measures to combat illegal immigration on the border with Mexico.
Trump has said that, if he returns to the White House, he will quickly reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, but he has not given further details on how he intends to do this.
Israel
The war in the Middle East, which began with the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel in October last year, is a delicate issue for Biden.
At the same time that he seeks to support the Israelis in the conflict, he is criticized by the young progressive electorate, who promoted large anti-Israel protests at American universities. Trump called these demonstrations a “disgrace” and blamed Biden for them.
In May, the US House approved a bill to force the Biden administration to send heavy weapons to Israel.
Biden had been criticized by the Israeli government, the Republican opposition and even members of the Democratic Party for suspending the shipment of offensive weapons to Israel, citing concerns about his partner’s ground offensive in Rafah, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. .
The matter still needs to be considered in the Senate, where Democrats have a majority. If approved, Biden must veto the proposal, which could cause him more wear and tear.
Since last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been publicly criticizing Biden for withholding weapons for the ally country, but the Democratic administration claims that the only shipment suspended for now is the one announced in May.
Biden has proposed a plan for a ceasefire in the war in the Gaza Strip, but has faced resistance from Hamas.
Although he held Netanyahu responsible for failing to take necessary measures to prevent the terrorist group’s attacks in October, Trump has reiterated the argument that the world was safer when he was president.
“There was a horrible invasion that would never have happened if I were president,” he told Fox News in March, saying that Israel needed to “put an end to the problem” in Gaza. (With EFE Agency)
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