Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden cast doubt during Tuesday night’s debate on whether United States (US) President Donald Trump would ever release his tax returns.
“You’ll get to see it,” Trump said repeatedly as moderator Chris Wallace pressed him to commit to a firm timeline. Biden retorted, “When? InshaAllah?”
While the Arabic language phrase literally means “God Willing,” it also has colloquial connotations of ambiguous commitment.
As Muslims, especially Arabs, pointed out the phrase used by Biden, many wondered if they had mistaken something for InshaAllah.
Yes I know Biden said “in July” just let me have this
Biden earlier released his personal income taxes, which show the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden paid about 30% of their $985,000 gross personal income.
Trump has refused to voluntarily release his income taxes, which had been a presidential custom stretching back decades.
The New York Times reported Monday that Trump did not pay any federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years. It said the former businessman paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and another $750 in 2017, the year he took office.
Trump disputed the report during Tuesday night’s debate, saying he has “paid millions of dollars in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax.”
From “will you shut up, man?” to “elections have consequences”, following are some of the quotes making news after Tuesday’s United States (US) 2020 presidential debate between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The polling is scheduled for November 3.
SUPREME COURT NOMINATION:
Trump, asked by moderator Chris Wallace about whether U.S. appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett should be nominated to the Supreme Court before the election: “We won the (2016) election. Elections have consequences.
“We have the Senate and we have the White House and we have a phenomenal nominee respected by all.
“ […] I think that she (Barrett) will be outstanding. She will be as good as anybody who has ever served on that court. We won the election and therefore we had the right to choose her.”
Biden: “We should wait, we should wait and see what the outcome of this election is.”
Trump: “As far as a say is concerned, the American people have already had their say. … I’m not elected for (just) 3-1/2 years.”
Responded Biden: “He’s elected until the next election. […] The election’s already started.”
HEALTHCARE:
Biden, told by Trump he had adopted former Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders’ “socialised medicine” proposals, said of the president: “Everybody here knows he’s a liar. […] You picked the wrong guy on the wrong night at the wrong time.”
“[…] Folks, do you have any idea what this clown’s doing? I tell you what, he is not for anybody needing healthcare.”
After Trump explained his healthcare proposal, Biden said: “He has no plan for healthcare. … The fact is this man has no idea what he’s talking about.”
DEALING WITH THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:
Biden to Trump: “You should get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap and … the golf course and go in the Oval Office and (put) together Democrats and Republicans, and fund what needs to be done now to save lives.”
Trump to Biden: “You didn’t think we should’ve closed our country (to China) because you thought it was terrible.”
“… We’ve done a great job. But I tell you, Joe, you could never have done the job we’ve done. You don’t have it in your blood.”
Biden on Trump’s leadership on the pandemic: “He panicked or he looked at the stock market. … A lot of people died, and a lot more (are) going to die unless he gets a lot smarter a lot quicker.”
Responded Trump: “There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.”
RACE RELATIONS:
Biden on Trump: “This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division.”
Trump to Biden, citing the then-senator’s support for the 1994 crime bill: “You’ve treated the Black community about as bad as anybody in this country.”
Biden: “Yes, there’s a systemic injustice in this country in education and work and in law enforcement and the way in which it is enforced.”
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND URBAN UNREST:
Trump: “The top 10 cities and just about the top 40 cities are run by Democrats in many cases, radical left, and they’ve got you wrapped around their finger, Joe, to a point where you don’t want to say anything about law and order. And I’ll tell you what the people of this country want and demand law and order, and you’re afraid to even say it.”
Biden said Trump had done nothing to calm the protests. “He just pours gasoline on the fire.”
Responding to Trump attacking him on the suburbs, Biden said: “He wouldn’t know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn. I know suburbs.”
WHITE SUPREMACISTS:
Wallace: “Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence or the number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha, and as we’ve seen in Portland?”
Trump: “I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right. … I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”
Wallace: “Then do it, sir.”
Biden: “Do it, do it. Say it.”
Trump: “You want to call them. What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”
Biden, referring to a right-wing group: “Proud Boys.”
Trump: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT:
Trump: “I believe that we have to do everything we can to have immaculate air, immaculate water, and do whatever else we can that’s good.”
Biden: “The first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord.”
ELECTION INTEGRITY:
Biden encouraged mail-in voting by saying Trump does it, too. “He sits behind the Resolute Desk (in the White House) and sends his ballot to Florida.”
Biden: “He cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of that election. … If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that will be accepted.
“If we get the votes, he’s going to go. He can’t stay in power.”
Trump: “Don’t tell me about a free transition. This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen. This is not going to end well.”
Biden: “You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. If you’re able to vote early in your state, vote early. If you’re able to vote in person, vote in person – whatever way is the best way for you. Because he cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election.”
Asked by Wallace if he would urge his supporters to stay calm and pledge not to declare victory until the election is certified, Trump said: “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
Trump: “If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with it. They cheat.”
Biden: “The fact is I will accept it and he will too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted, all the votes are counted. That’ll be the end of it.”
INTERRUPTIONS:
At one point when Trump was interrupting him, Biden said: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”
Wallace to Trump: “I think the country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions. I’m appealing to you, sir, to do that.”
Trump, referring to Biden, responded: “And him, too.”
Wallace: “Well, frankly you’ve been doing more interrupting.”
Pakistani-American journalist Amna Nawaz has been selected to moderate a United States (US) presidential debate and become the first woman of South Asian origin to have had the honour, according to media reports.
Nawaz, 40, a senior correspondent for the Public Broadcasting Service news programme “NewsHour”, along with Judy Woodruff, PBS anchor and managing editor, and colleague PBS NewHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, and Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta, will co-moderate the sixth Democratic primary debate, scheduled for December 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
Amana is the daughter of Shuja Nawaz, a former Pakistan Television (PTV) journalist and currently a Distinguished Fellow, South Asia Center, at Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank.
Nawaz, who joined PBS NewsHour in April 2018, besides serving as its senior national correspondent is also its primary substitute anchor.
Prior to joining the NewsHour, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s digital coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as a foreign correspondent at NBC News, reporting from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and the broader region.
She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian-America platform, built to elevate the voices of America’s fastest-growing population.
At the NewsHour, Nawaz has reported politics, foreign affairs, education, climate change, culture and sports. Her immigration reporting has taken her to multiple border communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. She’s investigated the impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, including following the journey of a single toddler as she left her home in Mexico, was separated from her family at the U.S. border, and later reunited with her family several weeks later. She also regularly covers issues around detention, refugees and asylum, and migrant children in US government custody.
Earlier, at NBC News, her work appeared on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Dateline NBC, MSNBC, and MSNBC.com.
She was NBC’s Islamabad Bureau Chief and Correspondent for several years, and was the first foreign journalist allowed inside North Waziristan. She covered the Taliban attack on Malala Yousafzai, the US raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, and broke news in a series of exclusive reports on the impact of US drone strikes. Nawaz reported for the network’s investigative unit, covering the US housing crisis and the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill, and also covered the election and inauguration of Barack Obama, the earthquake in Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina.
Nawaz has also been honoured with an Emmy Award for the NBC News Special “Inside the Obama White House,” a Society for Features Journalism Award, and was a recipient of the International Reporting Project fellowship in 2009.
She’s an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania–where she earned a bachelor’s degree, majoring in politics, philosophy and economics, and also where she captained the varsity field hockey team—and the London School of Economics—from where she received her master’s degree majoring in comparative politics.
Asked about the effect of her being an Asian American woman on her career, Nawaz told Jade magazine.com, , “Sure, in the parts of the world I’ve covered, there have been a lot of times when I’m the only woman at the protest, or in the briefing room, or on the military embed.”
“I’m certainly not the first woman to be any of those places and was actually really lucky to have the support and encouragement of female journalists before me who’d been there and done that.”
But she acknowledged, “I’ve had people make assumptions about me – because I’m a woman, because I’m Asian, because my family’s from Pakistan, because I’m Muslim – but I can’t control what others think. All I can do is bring my whole self to this job, to report the stories as I see them, and try to treat others’ stories with the same care and respect I’d want someone to treat mine.”
