Don’s on a roll as Joe hides
WASHINGTON: Democratic candidate Joe Biden has returned to his basement, with no campaign events scheduled until after the final presidential debate at the end of the week.
As Donald Trump pledged to hold as many as five rallies a day until the election in a fortnight, Mr Biden continued to avoid questions about his son’s business dealings.
That means the next time he is in public will be at the second debate on Thursday (Friday AEDT), and organisers say they have cracked down with some new rules.
The candidates will each
be given just two minutes of uninterrupted talking time for each question before their microphones are turned off.
The 90-minute debate will be in six 15-minute parts and each candidate will be granted an uninterrupted two min
utes to answer. The moderator will not cut into the backand-forth segments, but interruptions will count against the candidate’s total time.
When the pair met for the first debate, they repeatedly talked over each other.
Trailing in the national polls and neck-and-neck in several battlegrounds, there was some good news for Mr Trump, with the gap in key swing state Pennsylvania narrowing over the past week to within the margin of error.
In one of the six states Mr Trump defied the odds to win in 2016, the battle for Pennsylvania has tightened to Mr Biden on 49 per cent and Mr Trump on 45, compared to a 51-44 split just a week ago.
A buoyant Mr Trump said he believed that the Republicans would retake the White House on November 3.
“We are going to win. I wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago,” the President told his campaign staff in a phone call on Monday (Tuesday AEDT).
Meanwhile, Mr Biden’s campaign announced he was calling “a lid” for four days to prepare at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, for the final debate in Nashville.