Though it was strange the University of Memphis College Republicans’ booth was located on the left side of the UC Ballroom and the College Democrats’ was on the right, students didn’t find anything else surprising about the final presidential debate while watching Wednesday night.
Communications major Morgan Monroe, 18, was one of several in attendance at the Student Activity Council’s third debate-watching Pizza and Politics event.
“It’s like the same thing every single time out of both of their mouths,” Monroe said. “They basically argue the entire time. They never address the question. They always avoid it. What I don’t like mostly is how they interrupt each other and just target each other. They never talk about the actual questions.”
SAC member 19-year-old Qkirajah Robinson agreed.
“I feel like all the questions were avoided, which doesn’t help me because it’s my first time voting,” she said.
Leading up to the debate, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made many claims that the election was “rigged.”
According to USA Today, President Barack Obama spoke about Trump’s claims that the election was “rigged” on Tuesday at a White House News Conference, advising Trump to “stop whining and try to make his case to get votes.”
The president added “If, whenever things are going badly for you, you start blaming somebody else, then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job,” according to USA Today.
Republican Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, also classified Trump’s “rigged” election claims as “whining” Monday night during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“That’s whining,” O’Reilly said on The Late Show, “He should have a little buzzer, you know, that whenever he whines it’s like ‘BAAAH,’ you know, stop. Stop. Both candidates have an opportunity to win voters over if they can convince them that they want to help them, stop with the other stuff.”
Louis Focht, 23, is the president of the U of M chapter of College Republicans. He didn’t think Trump was “whining” so much as bringing up “very valid concerns” Wednesday night.
“I think he’s definitely exaggerating a little bit, but I think there are genuine concerns regarding voter fraud,” Focht said. “I think what he could mean by that, what I took from it, is that I think he’s very concerned about the media and the media’s coverage saying - maybe he’s implying that it’s rigged in Clinton’s favor, the way the reporting’s done.”
Focht did not approve of “the coverage Trump is getting versus Clinton.”
“Both candidates may have their flaws, but I definitely see a huge skew towards favorability with Clinton,” Focht said.
Jonathan Pesce, 22, plans to vote for Donald Trump. Pesce is an international studies, history, and French major and said that the candidates “spent enough time on issues,” but that the questions were “extremely loaded.” Still, he said these last 3 presidential debates were the “most entertaining debates” he’s ever seen.
“After studying the Middle East I happen to agree with what he says on the Middle East, even though he’s definitely not an expert,” Pesce said. “Whoever is advising him clearly knows something.”
Charlie Vantilburg, 18, actually manned a booth in support of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson at SAC’s Pizza and Politics. He said he has a registered organization with the Johnson campaign, though “not registered with the University yet” called “Youth for Johnson - Weld.”
“Most the people that watch the debates really aren’t all that interested in politics so they don’t read that much on it,” Vantilburg said. “When they watch the debate that’s pretty much all they get. I think if they got more of the real, big picture then they would be more informed and better voters.”
If voters represent the majority of students who laughed at Donald Trump’s remarks Wednesday night, and Donald Trump loses the election to Hillary Clinton, the president of the U of M Republicans has a plan.
“After the election, Republicans are really going to have to sit down and think ‘What do we stand for?’ ‘What are our values?’ and ‘How can we use our message to appeal to a broader base of Americans?” Focht said.
These are the most common words that Hillary Clinton said during the debate. She said "people" 37 times. She only said "Wikileaks" three times. She said "women" or "woman" 29 times while Donald Trump only said the words 8 times.
Even though Donald Trump has spoken a great deal about the election being rigged, he only said the word once during the debate while Hillary Clinton said it five times. Trump said "boarder" 13 times but only mentioned "Wikileaks" once. He used the word "tremendous" six times.
