In the hours leading up to the 2024 Presidential Debate, Gov. Brian Kemp visited Tech’s own McCamish Pavilion, which doubled as the spin room for the evening of the debate, to discuss his thoughts on President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s first debate since 2020.
“If this is to play back like it’s been in the past with a knock-down drag-out brawl, and they’re not focused on the future, … it may just be a wash,” said Kemp.
Like many Americans, Kemp hoped for a productive, policy-focused debate that could be genuinely informative, but he maintained low expectations. Thursday’s debate was exactly what he predicted — both candidates’ arguments consisted mainly of personal attacks, leaving voters with nothing substantive to consider about either candidate. Meanwhile, Trump and Biden’s campaign surrogates vied for media support, working to appeal to young voters.
Thanks to CNN, the Technique had the opportunity to represent the Institute in the spin room. Over 800 U.S. and foreign press members representing over 100 countries gathered in McCamish. What is usually a basketball court was transformed into a spin room, complete with a red carpet and press boxes lining the court’s sidelines where news organizations like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News simulcasted the debate and conducted live interviews with campaign surrogates and experts.
A spin room is the epicenter of media coverage for a debate, providing a designated area where campaign representatives can speak to the press and “spin” the results of the debate in their respective candidate’s favor. There, America’s most prominent politicians answered the student body’s most pressing questions for the two candidates who were preparing just across the street from Tech’s campus.
Access to reproductive healthcare continues to be a contentious issue among college students, and voters are turning to the candidates for clear stances on the issue. When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, it sparked protests and counter protests at the Institute, as well as in the greater Atlanta area. Now, states have the right to restrict or ban abortions, and Trump seemed to agree with this decision during the debate.
“And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court, and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted,” said Trump in response to a question about banning abortion medication. “Now the states are working it out. … But I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I think it’s very important. Some people don’t. Follow your heart.”
Biden has said on multiple instances that he will override the Roe decision, and that he blames the restrictions on the Trump-influenced Supreme Court. In the spin room, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) delivered a chilling message to young voters about why advocating for reproductive rights should be important to them.
“In the United States of America, we had 171,000 last year that had to leave their state to access their reproductive freedoms. That’s the world of Donald Trump. That’s 64,000 pregnancies related to rape in states that denied access to reproductive care. … A 12 year-old was raped in Mississippi that was forced to take the kid to term, and now she’s forced to take that kid to seventh grade. That’s the world of Donald Trump. You have a kid in Louisiana who was raped and had a baby clutching her teddy bear as she gave birth. That’s Donald Trump’s America. This is serious stuff, … and I want to applaud Vice President Harris for being a strong, clarifying advocate for women and girls, which is advocacy for all of us,” said Newsom.
Another topic that has been important to students is concerns about student loans. Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan for student loan forgiveness provides aid to college graduates across the nation, but aspects of the plan are currently on hold due to ongoing lawsuits arguing that the plan is a breach of executive authority. According to Education Data Initiative, the average public university student accrues $32,637 of debt to attain a bachelor’s degree. While Biden argues for SAVE’s validity, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) calls for it to be repealed, and he gave Tech students who may incur student loans a different perspective on the issue before the debate.
“The student loan bailout, in my opinion, is unconstitutional,” said Donalds. “Congress never acted to say ‘yeah we’re gonna forgive student loans that the American taxpayer has backed and subsidized.’ Joe Biden did that with a pen and a phone. That’s not presidential, [and] that’s not the way our system works. You cannot take money from two thirds of the American people to give it to a third of the American people and say that’s working out for everybody. That’s not not a recipe for long term success. … It’s going to lead to more inflation as a result.”
When asked how students are expected to finance their education without this program, Donalds encouraged students to treat their education like an investment, and he mentioned that institutions of higher education should stop “selling the dream” to young students that all degrees are equal.
“To students who struggle to finance their education, number one, be really cognizant of what you’re majoring in,” Donalds said. “Whether it’s kids here at Georgia Tech, or anywhere in the country, we have to be honest with them that all college degrees are not the same. We like to say that they are, but they’re not when you get into the real world. Debt is not a terrible thing, as long as you’re using it to acquire an asset that has value in the future. … A degree in humanities does not have the same economic value as a degree in finance, or accounting or engineering. We have to be smarter about how young people are going to college, because they have to deal with that debt burden.”
Additionally, Tech students wanted to hear the candidates’ thoughts on what role they might play in curtailing the progression of climate change and developing a more sustainable future. When moderator Dana Bash asked candidates how they would deal with the climate crisis, neither one gave a direct answer. Biden briefly referenced his passing of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 42%. Meanwhile, Trump claimed that he had the “best environmental numbers ever.”
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock encouraged Tech students to lead the innovation of a sustainable future, and he said that Georgia has become a leader in green energy development thanks to Biden’s infrastructure developments.
“Young people need to think about all the issues that they care about. I’m proud of what the Biden administration has done, for example, for creating a sustainable, green-energy future that protects the planet and creates jobs. … Georgia, because of the investments he made with the Inflation Reduction Act, is actually leading the way on that front. I’m proud of the fact that Dalton, Ga., the textile capital of the world, is also now the biggest producer of domestic solar panels in the western hemisphere. The students at Georgia Tech who are majoring in engineering, these smart young people are a part of that future,” said Warnock.
Directly after the debate, the general consensus among the present media was that Biden had lost. The debate was an opportunity to dispel voters’ reservations about his age and viability as a candidate, but his poor performance instead reinforced these doubts from his supporters and opponents alike. In the weeks following the debate, calls within the Democratic Party to replace Biden seem to grow louder each day, yet he remains adamant that he can succeed in another term.
The Democrats deviated from a normal post-debate strategy. Usually, each candidate’s campaign surrogates will remain on the spin room floor answering individual questions for hours following the debate. This time, they gathered on the floor behind what is usually the free-throw line, and they each gave a solemn statement with one central message: the debate made it clear that despite Biden’s shortcomings, they need the nation’s support in preventing Trump from serving another term in office.
“This election isn’t about all the lies that Trump is selling you,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). “What it’s about are the facts. The facts are that he took that right [referring to reproductive healthcare] away from us, and he wants to take more rights away from us, and he did not shy away from it. Every time he did not want to answer a question, he just decided to deflect.”
After about ten minutes, the Democrats concluded their statements and accepted a couple of questions from the media before promptly exiting McCamish. In their wake, they left over a dozen of Trump’s campaign surrogates alone with the press for over an hour, giving them plenty of time to send a ubiquitous message to every news channel — this debate was a complete and utter victory for Trump.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is one of Trump’s top campaign surrogates, and he remained on the spin room floor to discuss the strengths of Trump’s arguments and Biden’s exposed weaknesses. At 42, Gaetz is over 15 years younger than the median age of the House of Representatives, and he had a unique message to share with young voters regarding the upcoming election.
“Joe Biden is not their president. I can’t imagine how a young American would look at what they saw from Biden tonight and think they wanna ride with that guy. Like something broke with ‘Brandon’ tonight. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it’s off kilter. President Trump wants to make sure that young people have excellent jobs and can buy homes. Right now, young people are being turned into a generation of serfs who will rent forever and never build wealth the way our parents and grandparents did. Under President Trump’s economic policies, we will have lower interest rates [and] access to capital. Young people will be able to take risks and start businesses and do the things that fulfill the great American promise. Joe Biden has killed the American dream, and frankly, this debate for him was a colossal nightmare,” said Gaetz.
Overall, it is unclear to what extent the debate will affect either candidate’s votes. It served as evidence of their increasing ages and decreasing ability to levy an effective argument against one another. As a result, young voters continue to express their disillusionment towards the election process. According to a poll by the Harvard Political Review, 40% of voters ages 18-29 do not think their vote will make a real difference in the upcoming election. In an interview with the Technique, Warnock and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms expressed the importance of young voters in the presidential election.
“I think that it is perfectly okay to be disillusioned, but you can’t give up. Think about the Civil Rights Movement. We’re in front of the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and it was a process; it wasn’t just a one time event. It really was a revolution. That is what you all have before yourselves. You are a part of making lasting change. It’s not gonna happen overnight. … If you’re not involved, then you’re ensuring [the system’s] failure,” said Bottoms.
Warnock continued, “Feeling disillusioned is not a reason to become disengaged. In fact, it’s a reason to become more engaged. There have been no great movements in this country, like the Civil Rights Movement, without young people. I think that there are politicians who want to see young people [get out the vote] because they’re counting on you. You have to show up and hold the people that you are voting for accountable.”