Mayla Ligo

HON 300-0003

30 September 2020

Immersion Activity

For my immersion activity I chose to watch Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off in the

first general election presidential debate of 2020. I selected this for my immersion activity

because I have never been huge into politics and have never sat through and thoroughly listened

to the presidential debate, mostly because I have not been able to vote until now. Both of my

parents share the same political views, but I currently don’t lean one way more than the other

because I can agree with certain republican views as well as certain democratic views. I want to

be able to make this choice for myself and I hope that watching this presidential debate will

better educate me on each candidate's platform and the stance they take on certain topics and

issues that the United States is facing today.

Now I know that Trump is already on people's bad list because let’s be honest, he has not

been an amazing president, and anything he does that is good gets overlooked by his lack of

ability to speak to the public, the fact that he believes men are superior to women, and his blatant

racism. Going into watching the presidential debate I expected to react to it in disbelief that these

are the two men that are left in the running to represent our country when there are 7.5 billion

people in this world. I expected to find myself laughing and palming my face at the bickering

that was going to occur, which is an unfortunate thing to be expecting when watching our

potential presidents hash it out for the world to see.

 As I began to watch the presidential debate my expected thoughts instantly became true.

They first began talking about the new supreme court justice and not even 5 minutes into

watching the debate they were already going off-topic and cutting each other off, it was as if I

was watching two kids argue over a toy! As of now, watching the debate I feel that Trump is

stating more facts while Biden does not have as much to back up his thoughts, but it seems like

they are both all over the place. The moderator is trying to bring the candidates back together but

neither of them seem to want to listen; Trump has interrupted the moderator and Biden

consistently since the debate has started and has not let the moderator get his questions out. I find

this very disrespectful and rude considering Trump is bickering with the moderator who is just

there to do his job rather than his competitor, Joe Biden. I knew that I would be rolling my eyes

at the debate, but I in no way expected to be rolling my eyes this much and in this much awe at

the amount of undisguised disrespect President Trump is showing to his peers. It is starting to

feel like I am watching a comedy show when this is infact a presidential debate! The next topic

they began discussing was COVID and I did like that Biden decided to use a more sentimentalist

approach when talking about the issue, specifically stating, “How many of you got up this

morning and had an empty chair at the kitchen table because somebody died of covid.” I think

this was a smart move from Biden because it is appealing to the people’s emotions and COVID

has been so prevalent in everyone's life the past few months that it is important to talk about the

situation in an empathetic way. Trump on the other hand does not sound half as sympathetic. He

stated that he is trying to keep the country open because it is only affecting older people and that

he “puts on a mask on when he thinks he needs it.” I find this ridiculous for him to say

considering the fact that it has been proven by so many sources that wearing a mask has been
helpful in decreasing the spread of COVID and meanwhile the man leading our country won’t

put a mask on unless he feels he needs it.

After watching the debate I can say that this has helped to hinder my leadership style. I

know that I will never want to be a leader that is utterly rude and disrespectful to others and I

would much rather follow the style of being more empathetic and personable. I found myself

paying more attention to the debate when it wasn’t full of interrupting and arguing, and was

instead concise statements that appealed to the people. After watching the debate, I believe that

neither of the candidates make good leaders and am scared for how the next four years of our

lives will play out. I have been missing where I politically stand from my worldview for as long

as I have been alive, and this activity showed me that it is important to know what is going on in

our government and how it is going to affect us.

I am glad that I watched the presidential debate for my immersion activity and will now

pay more attention to politics and follow the candidates that are in the run for our country. I

believe that it is necessary for me to educate myself especially after I have seen how awful both

candidates are. Looking forward, I will continue to educate myself and stay up to date on politics

and watch the next presidential debate when the time comes.

I decided to include some of my favorite tweets I found about the presidential debate for your

amusement, enjoy!

“This isn’t a presidential debate. This is a cracker barrel lobby”

“The moderator sounded like a substitute teacher”

“Who wants to live with me in Canada let’s split rent”

“This CAN’T be the same USA Miley was partying in”

“What in the hell did we just watch”