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From Neely Bardwell
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Warning about sensitive content, mention of SA and violence against women
Local election 2024. The first presidential debate between the likely candidates of the two major political parties, President Joe Biden (Democrat) and former President Donald Trump (Republican), took place on Thursday evening in Atlanta.
The 90-minute debate was moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and touched on various topics such as the economy, immigration, abortion and democracy. Specific Native American concerns were never addressed during the debate.
For some viewers, Thursday’s debate was a bad night for the 81-year-old Biden. At the beginning, the president’s voice was noticeably scratchy as he gave incoherent answers. It was later revealed that he had a sore throat.
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Shortly after the debate, political pundits debated whether Biden should possibly drop out of the presidential race. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called Biden’s performance a “Defcon 1 moment” during an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday night.
“And I think that’s a tragedy because I think Trump had so many opportunities to attack that he could have easily been taken by surprise tonight,” Plouffe said.
On Friday, the White House reported that Biden caught a cold during the debate. His campaign team said the president would stay in the race.
While Biden’s speaking performance was not the performance his campaign staff had hoped for, Trump, 78, was a typical Trump, not answering moderators’ questions. His answers were filled with misinformation and falsehoods. The New York Times fact-checkers cited the former president’s falsehoods 26 times, while CNN reported Trump made 30 false claims.
Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly mentioned the safety of women in the United States, claiming that immigrants are coming to the United States in mass numbers and threatening women’s safety.
“These murderers come to our country and rape and kill women,” he said.
CNN verified this claim, citing statistics showing that crime in the U.S. fell significantly in 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. Murders and other violent crimes fell significantly during this period, even as the number of people crossing the southern border skyrocketed.
However, in Indian Country, the problem of violence against women and girls is all too real. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women had the second highest murder rate in 2020. Additionally, homicide was one of the top 10 causes of death for AI/AN women ages 1-45 in 2020. More than 2 in 5 AI/AN women have been assaulted in their lifetime.
Not only has Trump falsified information about violence against women rather than addressing the very real problem of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW), he has also made false claims about the state of our environment.
When Bash asked if the candidates would do anything about climate change, Trump replied: “I want absolutely clean water and absolutely clean air, and we had that. We had H2O, we had the best numbers ever, and we used all forms of energy, everything.”
He said that during his presidency, “the best environmental figures ever” had been achieved.
Indian Country knows that’s wrong, too. During his time in office, Trump rolled back more than 200 environmental protections.
The next presidential debate between Biden and Trump will be moderated by ABC News and is scheduled for Tuesday, September 10, at 9 p.m. EDT. By then, Biden and Trump are expected to be the official nominees of their respective party conventions. The Republican National Convention will be held July 15-18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Democrats will hold their convention in Chicago August 19-22.
On July 11, 2024, Trump is expected to be found guilty on 34 counts in New York.
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About the author
Neely Bardwell (descendant of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indian) is a staff reporter at Native News Online. Bardwell is also a student at Michigan State University, where she is majoring in political science and minoring in Native American studies.
