President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden offered sharply contrasting views on the still-raging coronavirus pandemic at Thursday’s final presidential debate, seeking to persuade the few remaining undecided voters 12 days before their Nov. 3 contest, Reuters informed.
Trump, a Republican, adopted a more restrained tone than he did during a chaotic first debate in September, when he repeatedly interrupted Biden. But Thursday’s clash still featured plenty of personal attacks between two men who evince little respect for each other, and Trump kept fact-checkers busy by leveling unfounded corruption accusations at Biden and his family.
The absence of disruptions yielded a more substantive debate over a range of topics including the economy, race, climate change, healthcare and immigration. But the coronavirus, which has killed more than 221,000 people in the United States, loomed over the proceedings as it has throughout the campaign.
The televised encounter in Nashville, Tennessee, represented one of Trump’s last remaining opportunities to reshape a race that national opinion polls show he has been losing for months, though the contest is much tighter in some battleground states likely to decide the election.
“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain president of the United States of America,” Biden said.
Trump, who has put his stewardship of the economy at the center of his campaign, defended his approach to the outbreak and said the country could not afford to close businesses again despite fresh surges.
“We’re learning to live with it,” said Trump, who has played down the virus for months. “We have no choice.”
“Learning to live with it?” Biden retorted. “Come on. We’re dying with it.”
Trump asserted that the virus was “going away,” several U.S. states reported record single-day increases in COVID-19 infections on Thursday, evidence the pandemic is accelerating anew.
Trump, whose instinct remains to run as an outsider, portrayed Biden as a career politician whose nearly 50-year record was insubstantial. But he did not lay out a clear agenda for a second term, while Biden returned again and again to Trump’s four years as president, pointing to the economic damage the virus has done to people’s lives.
After an opening segment on the pandemic, Thursday’s clash pivoted to rapid-fire exchanges over whether either candidate had improper foreign entanglements.
Trump repeated his accusations that Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices in China and Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Biden called them false and discredited.
Trump’s effort to uncover dirt on Hunter Biden’s Ukraine business ties led to the President’s impeachment. The President and his children have been accused of conflicts of interest of their own since he entered the White House in 2017, most involving the family’s international real estate and hotel businesses.
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