Words From the Final 2020 Presidential Debate

The final presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden took place in Nashville, Tennessee on October 22. The event was moderated by Kristen Welker of NBC News. Here are 20 words from the debate, ten from each candidate.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. beneficiary
    the recipient of funds or other advantages
    Tremendous investment is being made, biggest beneficiary, the black and Hispanic communities.
    – President Trump
  2. bureaucracy
    a government administered primarily by nonelective officials
    He’ll close down the country if one person in our massive bureaucracy says we should close it down.
    – President Trump
  3. cartel
    a consortium formed to limit commercial competition
    Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels…
    – President Trump
  4. catastrophic
    extremely harmful; bringing physical or financial ruin
    Look, his own person who ran that for him, who, as you know, was his chief of staff said, “It was catastrophic."
    – President Trump
  5. collusion
    secret agreement
    They went through everything I had, including my tax returns, and they found absolutely no collusion and nothing wrong.
    – President Trump
  6. corruption
    use of a position of trust for dishonest gain
    Release your tax return or stop talking about corruption.
    – Vice President Biden
  7. ether
    a medium that was once thought to fill all space
    There’s no way he can protect pre-existing conditions. None, zero. You can’t do it in the ether.
    – Vice President Biden
  8. legitimize
    sanction or make legal
    We’re not going to legitimize you and we’re going to continue to push stronger and stronger sanctions on you.
    – Vice President Biden
  9. malarkey
    empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk
    My response is, look, there’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey.
    – Vice President Biden
  10. mandate
    make obligatory
    Through the legislature, I terminated the individual mandate.
    – President Trump
  11. mortgage
    a conveyance of property as security for repaying a loan
    Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage?
    – Vice President Biden
  12. pawn
    a person used by another to gain an end
    He’s being used as a Russian pawn.
    – Vice President Biden
  13. socialist
    advocating the state ownership of industry
    It’s like saying that the fact that there’s a public option that people can choose, that makes it a socialist plan.
    – Vice President Biden
  14. sovereignty
    the authority of a state to govern another state
    They’re interfering with American sovereignty.
    – Vice President Biden
  15. underwrite
    guarantee financial support of
    First of all, I called my accountants, underwrote it, I’m going to release them as soon as we can.
    – President Trump
  16. ventilation
    the act of supplying fresh air and getting rid of foul air
    They need to deal with ventilation systems.
    – Vice President Biden
  17. vibrant
    vigorous and animated
    It was vibrant.
    – President Trump
  18. wage
    payment for work
    How are you helping your small businesses when you’re forcing wages?
    – President Trump
  19. wherewithal
    the necessary means (especially financial means)
    I would make sure that we set up national standards as to how to open up schools and open up businesses so they can be safe and give them the wherewithal, the financial resources to be able to do that.
    – Vice President Biden
  20. xenophobic
    having abnormal fear or hatred of foreigners
    Months later, he was saying I was xenophobic.
    – President Trump
Created on Thu Oct 22 22:23:21 EDT 2020 (updated Mon Oct 26 15:11:53 EDT 2020)

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