MIAMI, Fla. — President Donald Trump’s characteristically combative debate performance Tuesday night with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was met broad appreciation among Miami Republicans, who watched earnestly in support of the incumbent commander-in-chief.
With a modest crowd filling in a mid-sized brewery, the debate watch party hosted by the Miami chapter of the Young Republicans featured a majority-Hispanic group electrified by Trump’s first-term successes cheering at every punch line offered by Trump as the once-again apparent underdog favored to lose in a majority of oft-cited polls.
“I think that [Trump] showed that Biden doesn’t really have any issues to run on,” the group’s President Armando Ibarra told The Federalist at the conclusion of the debate. “There’s a clear contrast between President Trump and Biden… [Trump] has a history of actually delivering achievements for the American people whereas Biden has never really been able to deliver.”
Trump’s attacks of Biden’s nearly half-century of tenure at the upper echelons of government was a core focus of the president’s attention during the more than two-hour prime-time event, reminding viewers again and again that Biden’s long history in government helped fertilize the overgrown beltway swamp that voters elected the president to clean up just four years earlier.
“In 47 months, I’ve done more than you’ve done in 47 years,” Trump prodded the former vice president.
The Miami event included all the fanfare of a typical patriotic holiday, complete with the performance of a local band called “The Spirit of ’76” singing renditions of popular American melodies such as the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America” just moments before the 9 p.m. debate start time.
There’s no kneeling here pic.twitter.com/tqcd9ud52v
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) September 30, 2020
Twenty-year-old band-member Vanessa Ruano was also impressed by Trump’s performance and maintained she was equally surprised at how Biden managed to remain collected and coherent throughout the entire night.
“He was fire,” Ruano said of Trump, while also giving credit to an increasingly fragile Biden who frequently calls campaign “lids” early in the day to remain off the trail. “[Biden’s] not all there sometimes and you see clips where he has no idea what he’s talking about or he starts mumbling.”
Adrian Castano, a 21-year-old insurance broker, said he thought Trump was the real unifier on stage fighting to keep the peace. In contrast, Biden offered mere lip service to the riot violence to not offend the Democratic Party’s left-wing base.
“Biden does not want to address what’s going on with the radical left,” Castano said, going on to acknowledge that Biden condemned the violence in the debate but that the Democrat still continues to amp up identity politics driving deeper divides.
A near-universal appreciation for Trump Tuesday night among the nearly dozen interviews conducted with attendees was the president’s repeated commitment to disavowing the far-left ideological forces cementing their grip on the Democratic Party and therefore mainstreaming socialism.
Castano, who grew up in Cuba until the age of 12, told The Federalist he feels compelled to support the president in large part due to Trump’s endless emphasis on personal liberty.
“Trump represents individual freedoms, property freedoms, constitutional freedoms,” Castano said. “I came from Cuba. I grew up in a country where people are suppressed, people are thrown under the bus, people are thrown in jail because they believe in freedom.”
