The Choice 2016: AP Government Students on the Final Debate

Still of the candidates on stage in Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 19th debating the 2nd Amendment.

Still of the candidates on stage in Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 19th debating the 2nd Amendment.

On Wednesday, October 19th, the final 2016 presidential debate was hosted in Las Vegas by the FOX News network and was moderated by Chris Wallace. At Arrowhead, the AP Government student had a post debate discussion the day after. These young and upcoming voters, as well as course instructor, Tamara Varsos, had ample and strong topics to converse around on Thursday, October 21st.

Leading off the conversation, Varsos started with saying, “Immigration issues looked liked it got way off topic and Chris Wallace didn’t really try to get them back on either. I think he just kind of went with it, which maybe was good in some way? I personally think he did a great job as a moderator. Over the course of the debates, out of the three, he definitely did the best.”

Articles from online newspapers Los Angeles Times and New York Times concurred with Varsos regarding Wallace’s performance.

Going directly into issues, junior Sam Jungbluth said, “I think they both handled the Supreme Court issue topic well. Then all of a sudden, it went from immigration to cyber security which was kind of strange because they veered off topic to get into those issues.” Looking onto the candidates images and tonal performances, junior Aaron Allen said, “I think in this debate it looked like for the first time Hillary [Clinton] was actually desperate in grasping some of the topics instead of being consistently confident throughout the duration.”

Senior Joey Self said, “I found it sort of funny that at the start of the debate Hillary said the term ‘debunked,’ then after that, Trump went on to say it like ten times during the debate. Also he used the term ‘big league’ but it sounded like he said ‘bigly’ which lead to a Twitter eruption of how to spell the word ‘bigly’ and whether or not that was a word,” he says.
Some students even found themselves in a position of familiarity in regards to the debate’s situations. That was the case with senior Kate Wilson. “I sort of had this moment of déjà vu because within the same minute Hillary said ‘America is great because America is good,’ then Trump said, ‘No one has more respect for women than I do’ which happened almost the exact same way that it did in the last debate,” she says.

Adding to Wilson’s point, Varsos said, “Whoever in Hillary’s campaign told her to say that ‘America is great because America is good’ not just once but repeatedly should be fired. The repetition of that phrase is incredibly annoying and unnecessary.”

In regards to how the debate progressed, senior Jeremy Mason said, “I think the first twenty minutes were actually pretty solid. Both candidates really didn’t speak over each other and had somewhat calm tones when speaking out on the first issue. As the night progressed, and they started straying from the questions more, there was a lot more banter which lead to a really vicious, negative vibe the rest of the debate. I found it especially unsettling when they were calling each other puppets in that one segment. It made it seem, well more like confirm, that this whole election season is just a big joke.”

According to Twitter trends and various media outlets’ (MSNBC, FOX, CNN) sound bites immediately following the debate, the most talked about moment was when Donald Trump would neither confirm nor deny whether or not he would accept the outcome of the election despite the results. Pertaining that very issue, senior Oldine Paulsen said, “I was pretty concerned when Trump didn’t confirm that he would accept the outcome of the results regardless of what they are. That just seems kind of unheard of and not in a good way.”