BIDEN: It's about equity and equality. It's about decency. It's about the Constitution. We have never walked away from trying to require equity for everyone, equality for the whole of America. We've never walked away from it like he has done. It is true, the reason I got in the race is when those people. Close your eyes, remember what those people look like coming out of the fields, carrying torches, their veins bulging, just spewing anti-Semitic bile and accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan. A young woman got killed and they asked the president what he thought. He said, "There were very fine people on both sides." No president's ever said anything like that. This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle, to try to generate racist hatred, racist division.
BIDEN: Yes, there is. There's systemic injustice in this country, in education and work and in law enforcement and the way in which it's enforced. But look, the vast majority of police officers are good, decent, honorable men and women. They risk their lives every day to take care of us, but there are some bad apples. And when they occur, when they find them, they have to be sorted out. They have to be held accountable. What I'm going to do as President of the United States is call together an entire group of people at the White House, everything from the civil rights groups, to the police officers, to the police chiefs, and we're going to work this out.
What really is a threat to the suburbs is [Trump's] failure to deal with COVID. His failure to deal with the environment; they're being flooded, & burned out, because his refusal to do anything. That's why the suburbs are in trouble.
The Proud Boys, a self-described "Western chauvinist" organization, is considered a violent, nationalistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and misogynistic hate group, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization that tracks extremist groups. Proud Boys members marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and have organized against Black Lives Matter protests in recent months.
Biden commented on the Proud Boys reaction, responding to a journalist who tweeted out a screenshot of the group celebrating the mention. "This. This is Donald Trump's America," Biden tweeted.
BIDEN: Just take a look at what is the analysis done by Wall Street firms, points out that my economic plan would create 7 million more jobs than his in four years. It would create an additional $1 trillion in economic growth, because it would be about buying American. The federal government spends $600 billion a year on everything from ships, to steel, to buildings and the like. I'm going to eliminate a significant number of the taxes. I'm going to make the corporate tax 28%. It shouldn't be 21%. You have 91 companies [in] the Fortune 500, who don't pay a single penny in tax making billions of dollars.
BIDEN: There's systemic injustice in this country. [But] violence in response is never appropriate. Peaceful protest is; violence is never appropriate.
Q: Protests have turned violent in Portland, Oregon, especially. You talk about peaceful protests. Many of those turned into riots. You say that people who commit crimes should be held accountable. Have you ever called the Mayor of Portland or the Governor of Oregon and said, "Hey, you got to stop this, bring in the National Guard, do whatever it takes, but you'd stop the days and months of violence in Portland?"
BIDEN: I don't hold public office. But I've made it clear in my public statements that the violence should be prosecuted. It should be prosecuted and anyone who committed it should be prosecuted.
Q: But you've never called the leaders in Portland and in Oregon?
BIDEN: They can in fact take care of it if [Trump would] just stay out of the way.
BIDEN: We have to have community policing like we had before where the officers get to know the people in the communities. That's when crime went down.
TRUMP: That's not what it is about. He's talking about defunding the police.
BIDEN: I'm totally opposed to defunding the police offices. [Trump's] budget calls for a $400 million cut in local law enforcement assistance. They need more assistance; when they show up for a 9-11 call to have someone with them as a psychologist to keep them from having to use force.
TRUMP: He doesn't have any law support. He has no law enforcement.
BIDEN: That's not true.
TRUMP: He has almost nothing.
TRUMP: What is peaceful protest? When they run through town and burn down your stores and kill people all over the place--
BIDEN: That is not peaceful protest.
TRUMP: No, it's not, but you say it is.
Is that true, that no law enforcement has endorsed Biden? We found this article dated Sept. 4 on Fox News, headlined "More than 175 current, former law enforcement officials endorse Joe Biden, slam Trump as 'lawless' president." Excerpts:
"Fox News first obtained the list of the Biden-supporting law enforcement officials, which includes former sheriffs and former police chiefs who touted the former vice president's experience 'keeping communities safe.'
"The endorsements come after a number of high-profile law enforcement organizations threw their support behind Trump. In July, the National Association of Police Organizations endorsed Trump, praising his 'steadfast and very public support' for law enforcement. NAPO did not endorse a candidate in the 2016 election but endorsed Barack Obama and Biden in both the 2008 and 2012 elections."
"No, Joe Biden did not say he attended Delaware State University, the only historically Black university (HBCU) in the state. Biden said he got his "start" at DSU, and what followed was a slew of media reports slamming Biden for claiming to have attended an HBCU. Trump's campaign has even cited the claim as one of the "17 questions Joe Biden must answer" in the first presidential debate.
"In the video, Biden was referring to the support he received from the school when he announced his bid for Senate on the DSU campus in 1972. In the decades since, Biden has maintained close ties with DSU, serving as commencement speaker in 2003. Biden has often referenced to his time as a student at the University of Delaware, where the Biden School of Public Policy bears his name."
We're going to take the federal fleet and turn it into a fleet of electric vehicles. Making sure that we can do that, we're going to put 500,000 charging stations in all of the highways that we're going to be building in the future.
We're going to build an economy with the ability to take 4 million buildings and make sure that they are weatherized in a way that they'll emit significantly less gas and oil because the heat will not be going out.
There's so many things that we can do now to create thousands and thousands of jobs. We can get to net zero, in terms of energy production, by 2035. Not only not costing people jobs, but creating millions of good-paying jobs.
BIDEN: This is a guy who says that you don't have to have mileage standards for automobiles that exist now.
TRUMP: Not true.
BIDEN: It's all true. And here's the deal--
TRUMP: He's talking about the Green New Deal.
BIDEN: I'm talking about the Biden plan.
Q: Is it going to cost a lot of money and hurt the economy?
BIDEN: What it's going to do, it's going to create millions of jobs.
TRUMP: This is a 100 trillion dollars.
BIDEN: The fact is, it's going to create millions of good paying jobs, and these tax incentives for people to weatherize, is going to make the economy much safer. Look how much we're paying now to deal with the hurricanes. We're going to be in a position where we can create good jobs by making sure the environment is clean, and we all are in better shape. We spend billions of dollars now, on floods, hurricanes, rising seas.
Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. Vote whatever way is the best way for you. He cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election. When the votes are all counted, that will be accepted. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that'll be accepted. If in fact he says, he's not sure what he's going to accept, let me tell you something, it doesn't matter, because if we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He's going to go. He can't stay in power. It won't happen.
BIDEN: The American people have a right to have a say in who the Supreme Court nominee is, and that say occurs when they vote for United States Senators and when they vote for the President of United States. They're not going to get that chance now [with Amy Coney Barrett nominated last week] because we're in the middle of an election already. The election has already started. Tens of thousands of people already voted and so the thing that should happen is we should wait. We should wait and see what the outcome of this election is because that's the only way the American people get to express their view is by who they elect as President and who they elect as Vice President.
You should get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap in your golf course and go in the Oval Office and bring together the Democrats and Republicans and fund what needs to be done now to save lives.
TRUMP: We would have lost far more people, far more people.
BIDEN: His own CDC Director says we could lose as many as another 200,000 people between now and the end of the year. And he said, if we just wear a mask, we can save half those numbers. Just a mask.
BIDEN: Do you believe for a moment what he's telling you in light of all the lies he's told you about the whole issue relating to COVID? He still hasn't even acknowledged that he knew this was happening, knew how dangerous it was going to be back in February, and he didn't even tell you. He's on record as saying it. He panicked or he just looked at the stock market. One of the two. Because guess what? A lot of people died and a lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot quicker.
TRUMP: And they've also said the opposite.
BIDEN: No serious person has said the opposite.
TRUMP: Dr. Fauci said the opposite.
BIDEN: He did not say the opposite.
TRUMP: He said very strongly, "Masks are not good." Then he changed his mind. He said, "Masks are good."
BIDEN: He's been totally irresponsible the way in which he has handled the social distancing and people wearing masks, basically encouraged them not to. He's a fool on this.
TRUMP: There aren't a hundred million people with pre-existing conditions. Joe, the hundred million people is totally wrong. I don't know where you got that number.
FactCheck by NBC News, Sept. 20: A 2017 study from the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that about 133 million people had a pre-existing condition that would make them unable to buy insurance.
BIDEN: It does not. It's only for those people who are so poor they qualify for Medicaid they can get that free in most states, except Governors who want to deny people who are poor Medicaid. Anyone who qualifies for Medicaid would automatically be enrolled in the public option. The vast majority of the American people would still not be in that option.
TRUMP: Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged.
BIDEN: That's not true; he was not dishonorably discharged.
TRUMP: For cocaine use.
BIDEN: None of that is true.
Fact-Check from NBC News, Oct. 16, 2014, headline "Joe Biden's Son Hunter Kicked Out of Navy for Cocaine"
A U.S. official told NBC News that Hunter Biden was kicked out of the Reserve earlier this year after he failed a drug test. The official said Biden failed the test in 2013, but he was not kicked out until Feb. 14 of this year. Senior US officials told NBC News that Biden, 44, tested positive for cocaine. Hunter Biden issued a statement saying: "It was the honor of my life to serve in the US Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge. I respect the Navy's decision. With the love and support of my family, I'm moving forward."
BIDEN: The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. It's a little bit like how this guy and his friends look down on so many people. They look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics, like me, who grow up in Scranton. They look down on people who don't have money. They look down on people who are of a different faith. They looked down on people who are a different color. In fact, we're all Americans. The only way we're going to bring this country together is bring everybody together. There's nothing we cannot do, if we do it together. We can take this on and we can defeat racism in American.
BIDEN: The party is me. Right now, I am the Democratic Party.
TRUMP: And they're going to dominate you, Joe. You know that.
BIDEN: I am the Democratic Party right now.
TRUMP: Not according to Harris.
BIDEN: The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of.
BIDEN: This is not about my family or his family. It's about your family, the American people. He doesn't want to talk about what you need. You, the American people, it's about you. That's what we're talking about here.
The rainforests of Brazil are being torn down, are being ripped down. More carbon is absorbed in that rainforest than every bit of carbon that's emitted in the United States. Instead of doing something about that, I would be gathering up and making sure we had the countries of the world coming up with $20 billion, and say, "Here's $20 billion. Stop tearing down the forest. And If you don't, then you're going to have significant economic consequences." It's going to create thousands and millions of jobs. Good paying jobs.
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The above quotations are from First Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Sept. 29, 2020.
Click here for other excerpts from First Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Sept. 29, 2020. Click here for other excerpts by Joe Biden. Click here for a profile of Joe Biden.
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