EVERYDAY PEOPLE: My Night at the Trump-Clinton Debate

by Denise Clay

It takes a long time to get from Philadelphia to Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

A two-hour bus ride, a hour-long ride from New York’s Penn Station, a cab and a couple of shuttle buses later, I found myself at Hofstra for the first of three presidential debates between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton Tuesday night.

Those in the know say 100 million folks were probably going to turn on their televisions to watch Lester Holt, anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News” (and the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year) try and help the American public get the information needed to make a responsible decision in the voting booth on Nov. 8.

Part of the reason why I decided to apply for a credential for this debate was because I wanted to see how Holt would manage a debate featuring Hillary Clinton, a woman who is perceived to be an ice queen, and Donald Trump, a man who you could totally see throwing bananas or worse at someone.

He did what he could. Holt tried to control the debate by asking good questions, bringing up topics that might have been of interest to viewers, and fact-checking when he could. But the debate went from university stage to playground sandbox relatively quickly.

And while both sides will probably engage in a spirited debate about who actually won the debate, the losers, the true losers, were American voters.

It started well enough, with Holt asking Clinton why she felt she’d be better at improving the nation’s economy than her opponent. She answered the question in a way that would indicate she had actually heard it.

“We have to make the economy fairer to everyone,” she said. “We need jobs that are an investment in the future. We need to raise the minimum wage. We need to have equal pay for women’s work. And I would like to see businesses engage in profit-sharing. It shouldn’t be just the executives that benefit from a company’s success. Everyone should.”

She also called for programs that help people better balance work and family, free college tuition, and an increase in taxes on the rich to pay for all of it.

Trump was asked the same question.

But I’m not quite sure that he actually answered it.

“Jobs are fleeing the country,” he said to begin his treatise, “They’re going to Mexico and other countries and no one in our country can fight it. We’re losing our good jobs. Mexico is building some of the biggest plants. The United States? Not so much. We have to stop our jobs from being stolen. Ford is leaving. Other companies are leaving….”

There were two problems with what he said. One, it didn’t answer the question. Two, some of it wasn’t true. Almost immediately, Ford sent a Tweet disavowing Trump’s statement. While they are making investments in Mexico, they’re committed to Detroit … and have even tried to explain that to the Republican nominee.

“We shared the facts about Ford’s US jobs and investment,” a Ford spokeswoman told Market Watch.

OK….

For some reason, Holt felt the need to bring up the subject of race relations. I get it. He’s the only Black person moderating one of these clambakes. With incidents of police brutality happening as frequently as they have, it makes sense to have the conversation.

But it also takes maturity. And that wasn’t there at this debate.

I’m going to touch a little more on this in my next column.

Unfortunately, we have two more of these events left. Hopefully, they’ll be a little more informational.

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