Key moments from town hall meetings
IN AN easy metaphor for a divided country, US President Donald Trump and former Vice-president Joe Biden held individual, concurrent town hall meetings on separate networks instead of their scheduled virtual debate.
While Biden adopted a conciliatory tone, continuing to answer voters’ questions after the forum ended, Trump was often on the offensive, sometimes sparring with his moderator or taking a more combative approach.
Key moments:
¡ Trump seemed to confirm a Times report that he has $400 million (R7billion) in outstanding debts. He called the sum “a tiny percentage of my net worth” and insisted none of it was owed to Russia.
¡ Biden committed to giving an
answer before the election about whether he would expand the number of Supreme Court justices, though he declined to indicate what that number might be.
¡ The candidates differed on the topic of masks, with Biden brandishing his own while Trump suggested –largely inaccurately – that scientists were divided about their worth.
¡ In perhaps his most incendiary remarks, Trump repeatedly declined to disavow Qanon, a pro-trump internet community that has been described by law enforcement as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president professed to have no knowledge of the group, and as a result could not disavow it, but then demonstrated specific knowledge of one of its core conspiracy theories involving paedophilia that is entirely false. “I do know they are very much against paedophilia. They fight it very hard.”
With less than three weeks left in the presidential campaign, there was no sign that either candidate was diverging from the political tracks they laid down months ago, with Biden hewing close to a set of broadly popular views on economic and public health issues and Trump improvising freely, admitting no fault in his own record and hurling various forms of provocation.
Their opposing presentations gave the impression that, had the two men been onstage together on Thursday evening, it might have unfolded much like their previous debate, which saw Trump hectoring and interrupting Biden for most of an hour and a half. | New Tork Times