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Washington, Sep 30 (AP/PTI): President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden sparred Tuesday in their first of three debates, hoping to sway undecided voters planning to cast ballots by mail and in person in the final weeks leading up to the November 3 election.
A look at how their statements from Cleveland stack up with the facts: TRUMP, addressing Biden on US deaths from COVID-19: If you were here, it wouldn't be 200,000 people, it would be 2 million people. You didn't want me to ban China, which was heavily infected.... If we would have listened to you, the country would have been left wide open.
This accusation is off the mark. Biden never came out against Trump's decision to restrict travel from China. Biden was slow in staking a position on the matter but when he did, he supported the restrictions.
Biden never counselled leaving the country wide open in the face of the pandemic.
Trump repeatedly, and falsely, claims to have banned travel from China. He restricted it.
The US restrictions that took effect February 2 continued to allow travel to the US from China's Hong Kong and Macao territories over the past five months.
The Associated Press reported that more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals based in those territories entered the US in the first three months after the travel restrictions were imposed.
Additionally, more than 27,000 Americans returned from mainland China in the first month after the restrictions took effect.
US officials lost track of more than 1,600 of them who were supposed to be monitored for virus exposure.
Dozens of countries took similar steps to control travel from hot spots before or around the same time the US did.
Biden, on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett: She thinks that the Affordable Care Act is not constitutional. That's not right.
Biden is talking about Trump's pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett has been critical of the Obama-era law and the court decisions that have upheld it, but she has never said it's not constitutional.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on November 10, and the Trump administration is asking the high court to rule the law unconstitutional.
Trump: Drug prices will be coming down 80 or 90 per cent.
The Facts: That's a promise, not a reality.
And as a promise, it's an obvious stretch.
Trump has been unable to get legislation to lower drug prices through Congress. Major regulatory actions from his administration are still in the works, and are likely to be challenged in court.
There's no plan on the horizon that would lower drug prices as dramatically as Trump claims.
Trump: You said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn't go to Delaware State. ... There's nothing smart about you, Joe.
The Facts: Trump is quoting Biden out of context. The former vice president, a graduate of the University of Delaware, did not say he attended Delaware State University but was making a broader point about his long-standing ties to the Black community.
Trump is referring to remarks Biden often says on the campaign, typically when speaking to Black audiences, that he goes way back with HBCUs, or historically Black universities and colleges.
Biden has spoken many times over the years at Delaware State, a public HBCU in his home state, and the school says that's where he first announced his bid for the Senate his political start.
I got started out of an HBCU, Delaware State now, I don't want to hear anything negative about Delaware State, Biden told a town hall in Florence, South Carolina, in October 2019.
They're my folks. Biden often touts his deep political ties to the Black community, occasionally saying he grew up politically or got started politically in the Black church.
In front of some audiences, he's omitted the word politically, but still with a clear context about his larger point.
The statements are all part of standard section of his stump noting that Delaware has the eighth largest Black population by percentage.
A spokesman for the Delaware State University, Carlos Holmes, has said it took Biden's comments to refer to his political start, saying that Biden announced his bid for the US Senate on the DSU campus in 1972.
Biden's broader point is push back on the idea that he's a Johnny-Come-Lately with the Black community or that his political connections there are owed only to being Barack Obama's vice president.
Justifying his administration's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, US President Donald Trump has said it was a "disaster" and people were happy being out of it, while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden vowed to rejoin the historic accord if voted to power.
The Trump administration notified the United Nations in November last year that the US would withdraw from the climate agreement as the deal puts an "unfair economic burden" on Americans. The notification begins a one-year process of exiting the global climate change accord, culminating the day after the 2020 US election on November 3.
"I want crystal clean water and air. I want beautiful clean air. We have now the lowest carbon. If you look at our numbers right now, we are doing phenomenally. But I haven't destroyed our businesses. Our businesses aren't put out of commission," Trump said during the first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday.
"If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a disaster from our standpoint. And people are actually very happy about what's going on because our businesses are doing well," he said.
The president was responding to a question by debate moderator Chris Wallace.
Over your four years, you have pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. You have rolled back a number of Obama environmental records. What do you believe about the science of climate change, and what will you do in the next four years to confront it? Wallace asked Trump.
The Paris accord committed the US and 187 other countries to keeping rising global temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels and attempting to limit them even more, to a 1.5C rise. The decision by the US - one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases - has led to condemnation from environmentalists and expressions of regret from world leaders.
During the debate, Biden said he would rejoin the deal on climate change, if elected to power in the November presidential election.
"The first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Accord...because with us out of it, look what's happening. It's all falling apart," Biden said, responding to a question on climate change.
He, however, to the surprise of many, said the 'Green New Deal' being pushed by his party is not his plan.
Trump asked Biden if he was so concerned about climate change, why he did not do it when he was a Senator and the vice president of the country.
"Why didn't he do it? For 47 years, you were vice president why didn't you get the world. China sends up real dirt into the air, Russia does, India does, they all do. We are supposed to be good and by the way, he made a couple of statements. The Green New Deal is USD 100 trillion not USD 20 billion, Trump said.
Responding to Trump's remarks, Biden said, That is not my plan. The Green New Deal.
Biden said if voted to power, his administration will ensure that it is able to take the federal fleet and turn it into a fleet that are electric vehicles.
We're going to put 500,000 charging stations in all of the highways that we're going to build in the future," he said.
Meanwhile, on the issue of wildfires, Trump said, "As far as the fires are concerned, you need forest management in addition to everything else. The forest floors are loaded up with trees, dead trees that are years old and they're like tinder, and leaves and everything else. You drop a cigarette in there, the whole forest burns down. You've got to have forest management."