The first presidential debate between Secretary Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump took place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. To say this event was anticipated is an understatement, with many believing that viewership of the debate would reach 100 million. NBC’s Lester Holt was the debate moderator, and posed questions to each of the candidates. As you could imagine, the debate featured some heated moments between each of the candidates, with both of them throwing jabs at each other during their responses.

The debate covered topics such as each candidate’s tax plan, national security, cyber defense, and social issues such as police brutality. One of the first differences shown between the candidates were their techniques to keep companies from exporting jobs overseas and their proposals for economic growth. Trump’s plan primarily focused on tax cuts and deregulation of businesses. He elaborated upon his plan, commenting on how cutting both taxes and regulations would encourage companies to return to America, and to once again bring their wealth into the country. Secretary Clinton took a different approach, claiming that the wealthy need to pay their “fair share.” She continued to criticize Trump’s plan, calling it “Trump-ed up trickle down” economics.

Another prominent issue that the candidates touched upon during their debate was national security, particularly preventing ISIS from spreading and committing atrocities. Trump criticized Clinton’s role as secretary of state, accusing her of causing many of the problems that now plague the Middle East, and also mentioned the enormous price these wars have had on the United States. He said, “We’ve spent four trillion trying to topple various people” then followed up by saying, “If we could’ve spent that four trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems – our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had – we would’ve been much better off. I can tell you that right now.” Trump also criticized Clinton on cyber security, when he touched upon Secretary Clinton’s alleged private server. He noted how Secretary Clinton could have compromised some United States’ classified information.

Secretary Clinton was not without criticisms of Trump, however. She slammed criticisms of NATO that Trump had made in the past. Secretary Clinton continued, detailing her national security plans, saying “I think we’ve got to have an intelligence surge, where we are looking for every scrap of information,” and added that the United States need to gather as much intelligence as possible from Europe and the Middle East. She also utilized a line that she had previously featured in her campaign when she said that someone so sensitive to a tweet should not have access to nuclear codes.

The debate continued, turning to issues such as relations between police, and those whom they are sworn to protect. Trump claimed that stop and frisk would reduce crime in bad neighborhoods, and that it was an effective law enforcement technique in New York. Secretary Clinton said that relationships between police and their communities needed to be mended, and claimed that people needed to tackle their implicit bias, a term referring to how people may judge people differently on a subconscious level. These answers were both in response to the police brutality that has been prevalent in the news recently, and the riots that soon followed.

Ultimately, the debate was an interesting illustration of the differences between the candidates, and provided information on what direction each of the candidates would steer the country if they were elected. This was just the first debate between the candidates, so check out The Patriot Post for all of your presidential election news!