Los Angeles
Democratic White House candidates attacked President Donald Trump but also clashed sharply with one another during Thursday’s Democratic debate, where a smaller field allowed lesser-known candidates to shine against the frontrunners.
One day after Trump’s ignominious impeachment, seven candidates united to declare the president must be defeated at the 2020 ballot box.
“We need to restore the integrity of the presidency,” said frontrunner Joe Biden, who accused Trump of “dumbing down” the office “beyond what I even thought he would do.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, second in the standings, blasted Trump as “running the most corrupt administration in the modern history of this country,” while fellow Senator Elizabeth Warren said the president ignores the poor to do “everything he can for the wealthy and the well-connected.”
But after calls for greater moral leadership from the White House and crisp back-and-forth about trade policy, health care and how to lift more Americans out of poverty, the debate took a more aggressive tone with a series of heated clashes between candidates. Warren launched her sharpest attacks yet on rival Pete Buttigieg, saying the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has been holding closed-door fundraisers for the wealthy, including at a billionaire-owned “wine cave” in California.
“Your net worth is 100 times mine,” Buttigieg, whose star has risen substantially in the past two months of campaigning, said.
“I don’t sell access to my time,” Warren shot back.– AFP
