Much of the attention on Thursday’s presidential debate fell upon President Joe Biden’s faltering performance, which has called into question whether he can even remain the Democratic candidate. In the aftermath, some have focused on former President Donald Trump’s nonstop lies.
Left largely overlooked, however, has been the open xenophobia Trump deployed against Palestinians and immigrants, and the silence with which it was met.
The most striking illustration might be Trump’s response to a prompt from CNN moderator Dana Bash, regarding Israel’s war on Gaza and the “humanitarian crisis” that Israel has created while killing thousands of Palestinians.
As Biden insisted that Hamas was the only entity standing in the way of a ceasefire, Trump actually pushed back on the idea. “You got to ask him,” Trump began, referring to Biden, “as far as Israel and Hamas, Israel is the one that wants to go. He said the only one who wants to keep going is Hamas.” He continued: “Actually, Israel is the one, and you should let them go and let them finish the job. He doesn’t want to do it. He has become like a Palestinian. But, they don’t like him because he is a very bad Palestinian. He is a weak one.”
When Trump accused Biden of having “become like a Palestinian,” the moderators did not ask him why the word is apparently a pejorative.
The moment embodied a through line of the debate: CNN moderators Bash or Jake Tapper would ask a question; Trump would respond with something off-topic, dishonest, and dangerous; and the moderators, instead of pushing back or even acknowledging the absurdity of Trump’s answers, would simply move on, thanking the twice-impeached former president for his time.
When, for instance, Trump accused Biden of having “become like a Palestinian,” but a very bad one, a “weak one,” the moderators did not ask him what that meant or why the word “Palestinian” is apparently a pejorative. Nor did they question what “finish the job” might mean in the context of a war that has killed upwards of 37,000 people.
Biden, for his part, began his retort saying he’s “never heard so much foolishness,” but did nothing to refute Trump’s claims, instead focusing on Trump wanting to leave NATO.
In response to the same question, Biden said he’s still pushing hard for Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal and made clear that “the only thing I’ve denied Israel was 2,000-pound bombs,” given the risk to innocent people in populated areas. But he used the debate to assure voters that his administration is “providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them.”
“We are the biggest producer of support for Israel than anyone in the world,” Biden said.
Shortly after, Bash followed up with Trump, asking if he would “support the creation of an independent Palestinian state in order to achieve peace in the region.”
“I’d have to see,” Trump replied, before saying 212 more words delving back into his issues with NATO. Bash did not follow up, instead simply closing the conversation with “thank you.” (The question was not also pitched to the current commander-in-chief).
Trump made similarly anti-Palestinian comments in his closing statement. ”For three and a half years, we’re living in hell,” Trump said, listing off things he blamed Biden for. “We have the Palestinians and we have everybody else rioting all over the place.”
“You talk about Charlottesville,” Trump said, comparing anti-war demonstrations and student protests to a rally of neo-Nazis who chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” “This is 100 times Charlottesville, 1,000 times.”
The hateful rhetoric extended beyond Palestinians — and so, too, did the general silence from moderators. Trump referred to immigrants as hordes of millions coming from “prisons, jails, and mental institutions” into the country to destroy it. He falsely claimed that migrants were coming into the country and killing people at “a level that we’ve never seen” and also said they were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”
None of this is new for a candidate who entered the political sphere insisting that then-candidate Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim and who announced his 2016 campaign asserting that Mexico was “bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists” to the United States.
The debate has triggered a broader reflection on whether a candidate other than Biden would be best suited to put down such cruelty, though some higher-echelon Democrats have thus far refused to entertain that possibility. While many fear the Democratic Party brass is re-running elements of 2016 — refusing to take seriously those who fear their stubbornness may lead to Trump’s victory — it seems the media is following suit in treating Trump’s viciousness as a baseline rather than an aberration.
