Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faced off during the first presidential debate of the 2016 election on Monday night.

The 90-minute debate was held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Lester Holt, an anchor on “NBC Evening News” served as a moderator.

Clinton said she would invest in creating jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, technology, renewable energy and small businesses — since most of the new jobs will come from small business.

“We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women’s work,” Clinton said.

Trump responded that jobs are fleeing the country and going to other countries like Mexico and China. The focus, he said, has to be on making sure companies aren’t leaving the United States. Under his plan he said he would be reducing taxes from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies both big and small.

“That’s going to be a job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan,” Trump said. “It’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch.”

The two candidates also discussed the release of Trump’s income tax information. Trump said he would release his information, against the advice of his lawyers, if Clinton would release her private emails.

Holt moved on and asked the candidates how they are going to address the issue of race relations and bridge the “very wide and bitter gap.”

Clinton said the country has to address the issue by fixing the trust between communities, ensuring police are receiving the best training and techniques and tackling the issue of gun violence and possession.

Trump said Clinton doesn’t want to use the words “law and order,” but that’s what the country needs because without it there will be no country. He brought up the topic of “stop and frisk” and said maybe it should be brought back.

Following up on Trump’s comment, Holt said stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York since it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men.

“No, you’re wrong,” Trump said.

The business mogul added that the case went before a “very against-police judge” and there are many places in the country that allow it. However, he did agree that community and police relations need to be improved.

Clinton said systematic racism in the criminal justice system needs to be addressed and the system needs to work on providing more second chance programs and not having profit as a motivation to fill up prison cells. Trump said he doesn’t really think Clinton disagrees with him about stop and frisk, but for political reasons she can’t say it. The Republican presidential candidate continued saying stop and frisk had a great impact on the safety of New York City.

Cyber security and cyber warfare are likely among the biggest challenges facing the next president, Clinton said. The country is facing two adversaries: Independent hacking groups formed for commercial hacking to steal money and increased cyber attacks coming from states and organs of states — directly addressing Russia.

Trump said he agrees with parts of what Clinton said. He also addresses her comment on Russia saying that nobody knows if it was Russia who broke into the Democratic National Committee.

When you look at what the Islamic State is doing, Trump said, they are beating the U.S. at its own game. He said the country has to get very tough on cyber warfare because it is a huge problem.

“But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that’s true throughout our whole governmental society,” Trump said. “We have so many things that we have to do better.”

Published on September 27, 2016 at 1:45 am

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