Author’s note: This is the analysis of one round of the 2024 Presidential debate between Biden and Trump. It is linked from a more comprehensive article.
Round 13: Opioid Crisis
Question: What will you do to help Americans right now in the throes of addiction, who are struggling to get the treatment they need?
TRUMP: To finish up, we now have the largest deficit in the history of our country under this guy, we have the largest deficit with China. He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. So I think he’s afraid to deal with him or something.
Non-responsive.
Appeals to Biden’s motives are also ad hominems.
The largest trade deficit with China claim false. Tracking the data from 2013, the deficit declined under Biden from its high point during the Trump administration.
The Manchurian candidate claim is not only an ad hominem but also a lie. There is no evidence Biden received money from China despite attempts by House Republicans to link payments through his son, Hunter.
Trump’s own tax returns show he received money from China during his time in office.
But do you notice? He never took out my tariffs because we bring in so much money with the tariffs that I imposed on China. He never took them away. He can’t because it’s too much money. It’s tremendous. And we saved our steel industries. And there was more to come, but he hasn’t done that.
But he hasn’t cut the tariffs because he can’t, because it’s too much money. But he’s got the largest deficit in the history of our country and he’s got the worst situation with China. China is going to own us if you keep allowing them to do what they’re doing to us as a country. They are killing us as a country, Joe, and you can’t let that happen. You’re destroying our country.
Hyperbole.
Equivocation. Biden kept some tariffs, but not the steel tariffsTrump referred to. The administration removed them because they hurt downstream manufacturers, costing manufacturers $3 billion.
The claim that China will own us is is the argumentum ad metum fallacy, or appeal to fear.
Misleading and false. Yes the trade deficit is the largest in history if measured in real dollars, unadjusted for inflation, but as a percentage of GDP it’s well above its lowest point in 2008 during the Bush administration and down significantly from Trump’s pre-COVID trade deficit.
******TAPPER:* * So, President Trump, you have 67 seconds left. The question was, what are you going to do to help Americans in the throes of addiction right now who are struggling to get the treatment they need?
TRUMP: Jake, we’re doing very well at addiction until the COVID came along. We had the two-and-a-half, almost three years of like nobody’s ever had before, any country in every way. And then we had to get tough. And it was – the drugs pouring across the border, we’re – it started to increase.
We got great equipment. We bought the certain dog. That’s the most incredible thing that you’ve ever seen, the way they can spot it. We did a lot. And we had – we were getting very low numbers. Very, very low numbers.
Then he came along. The numbers – have you seen the numbers now? It’s not only the 18 million people that I believe is even low, because the gotaways, they don’t even talk about gotaways. But the numbers of – the amount of drugs and human trafficking in women coming across our border, the worst thing I’ve ever seen at numbers – nobody’s ever seen under him because the border is so bad. But the number of drugs coming across our border now is the largest we’ve ever had by far.
Non responsive. The question is not about stopping the flow of drugs but about treatment for addicts.
Trump creates a red herring. Immigrants have little to do with the opioid crisis, which is attributed to the pharmaceutical industry, inadequate regulations, and cartel trafficking.
In fact most of the drugs came through legal crossing points. Furthermore, while imports of many opioids decreased, imports of fentanyl, the most lethal and addictive synthetic opioid, increased by 2,000 percent (20 times as much) during Trump’s term.
TAPPER: President Trump…the question is about Americans in the throes of addiction right now struggling to get the treatment they need.
TRUMP: Because this does pertain to it. He ended remain in Mexico, he ended catch and release. I made it catch and release in Mexico, not catch and release here. We had so many things that we had done, hard negotiations with Mexico, and I got it all for nothing.
Non-responsive. Catch and release programs have nothing to do with curing addiction
Misleading. His negotiations with Mexico involved the threat of 25 percent tariffs and the final agreement was far from what he wanted.
It’s just like when you have a hostage, we always pay $6 billion for a – every time we sees hostage. Now we have a hostage. A Wall Street Journal reporter, I think a good guy, and he’s over there because Putin is laughing at this guy, probably asking for billions of dollars for the reporter.
I will have him out very quickly, as soon as I take office, before I take office. I said by literally as soon as I win the election, I will have that reporter out. He should have had him out a long time ago. But Putin is probably asking for billions and billions of dollars because this guy pays it every time.
We had two cases where we paid $6 billion for five people. I got 58 people out and I paid essentially nothing.
Total brain fart. He s confusing so many issues. Somehow he links his negotiations to hostage taking (perhaps rightly so considering the tariff threat) to Evan Gershkovich to Putin asking for billions in ransom of which only Gershkovich is real.
False analogy fallacy, comparing two situations that are totally unrelated.
Irrelevant.
Gross exaggeration. Putin is not asking for billions, he’s asking for a prisoner exchange.
Another gross exaggeration. Trump did organize the release of several hostages, but more like eight not 58. Biden’s record? Seventeen .