Debate from a distance
Trump, Biden compete for votes in separate town hall meetings
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Thursday that he’s open to a potential Democratic effort to expand the Supreme Court, moments after he reiterated that he’s “not a fan of court packing.”
Biden said he’d announce his position on court packing before the election, arguing that making a statement three weeks before Nov. 3 would distract from the rushed confirmation process of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
“Depends on how it’s handled,” he said of the Barrett confirmation at an ABC News forum held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and moderated by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“Depends on how much they rush this … if they vote (on confirmation) before the election. … I’m open to consider what happens from that point on,” he said.
“I’ll have an answer on (court packing)” before the election, he vowed, reiterating the answer would be “depending on how they handle this” Barrett nomination to the Supreme Court.
“Presidents come and go,” Biden said. “Justices stay and stay and stay.”
Appearing nearly 1,200 miles away, President Donald Trump committed to a “peaceful transition of
power,” but not before pointing to the Obama-biden administration for not living up to that standard.
“Let me just tell you, they talked about the peaceful transfer, right?” Trump told NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie during his town hall in Miami on Thursday night. “They spied on my campaign and they got caught, and they spied heavily on my campaign.
“And they tried to take down a duly elected sitting president and then they talk about, ‘Will you accept a peaceful transfer?’ And the answer is, ‘Yes, I will,’ but I want it to be an honest election and so does everybody else.”
Trump scoffed at Guthrie for a question about denouncing white supremacy, rebuking her suggestion that he seems “hesitant to do so.”
“You’ve done this to me and everybody. … I denounce white supremacy,” Trump said. “I’ve denounced white supremacy for years. But you always do it. You always start with the question.
“You didn’t Joe Biden whether or not he denounces antifa. I watched him on the same basic show with Lester Holt, and he was asking questions like Biden was a child.”
Guthrie insisted that “it feels that sometimes you’re hesitant to do so.” Trump shot back.
“Here we go again. Every time, in fact my people came, ‘I’m sure they’ll ask you the white supremacy question,’ ” Trump said.
“I denounce white supremacy, and frankly, you want to know something, I denounce antifa and I denounce these people on the left who are burning down our cities, that are run by Democrats, who don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump added as a woman in the background could be seen nodding her head.
Racial justice
In Philadelphia, a young Black student called out Biden for a dismissive remark the former vice president made about his support of Black voters.
“So my question for you then is, besides ‘you ain’t Black,’ what do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continually fails to protect them?”
student Cedric Humphrey asked.
Biden replied by touting his plans to expand educational opportunities that would lift people to a better economic standing.
“The federal government spends billions of dollars a year on universities because they’re … the best-kept secret of where most of the major inventions come out of,” he said.
“And so that school will now be able to produce young Black women and men who are going to go into a field of a future that’s burgeoning.”
Biden called a 1994 crime bill that he supported a “mistake,” acknowledging it led to an increase in the jailing of people of color, but defended some aspects of the measure.
Though the bill had the support of Black leaders at the time, Biden said things have “changed drastically.”
“The mistake came in terms of what the states did locally,” he said. “What we did federally … it was all about the same time for the same crime.”
“It was a mistake,” he said.
Pleading with Pelosi
Trump was combative at times with host Guthrie, but was also forceful on direct questioning about his pandemic positions, economic recovery, health care reform, pre-existing conditions, tax returns, and being “under levered” with debt compared to assets with the Trump Organization.
Trump also made an impassioned plea for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., to come together to deliver much-needed
coronavirus impact stimulus for Americans who are hurting.
“The problem you have is Nancy Pelosi,” Trump said. “She couldn’t care less about the worker. She couldn’t care about our people. I want a stimulus. The Republicans want to approve a stimulus. She doesn’t want to do it, because she thinks it’s bad for her election.
“The fact is, she’s wrong. She’s in our way. She’s not approving it. She doesn’t appreciate our people and she doesn’t appreciate at all our workers.”
Questioned about his tweeting, including sharing of conspiracy theories, Trump said retweets do not equal endorsements. Referencing his recent retweet of a baseless conspiracy theory that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is not dead, Trump said he was not taking a position.
“That was a retweet,” he told Guthrie. “I’ll put it out there, people can decide for themselves. I don’t take a position.”
Earlier in the town hall, Trump declined to denounce the Qanon conspiracy theory, saying he agrees with its adherents’ opposition to pedophilia and cannot be sure if there is a satanic pedophile cult involving prominent Democrats or not.
Eliminating tax cuts
Biden, in his town hall, said that he won’t use executive orders to get things done — including raising taxes — saying he prefers building a “consensus.”
Biden said he would, if elected, raise taxes on those making over $400,000 a year, and also raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.
Biden says he doesn’t plan to eliminate all the tax cuts enacted by President Donald Trump, just those that apply to the top earners. Referencing tax cuts for the top 1 percent, Biden said: “That’s what I’m talking about eliminating, not all the tax cuts that are out there.”
Biden also said he’d take a vaccine to protect against COVID-19, but noted there should be a “plan” for distributing it even before it’s available.
Biden warned there likely won’t be a vaccine until early 2021. He also said it’s unlikely he could institute a federal vaccine mandate.
Biden put distance between his clean energy goals and the Green New Deal, saying the policy plan popular with progressives isn’t achievable within the time frames it has laid out.
The former vice president said there should be “zero discrimination” against transgender people and he promised to restore protections for them that Trump has sought to remove.
And Biden said if he loses the election, he will return to teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. However, he also said he would continue to press for racial justice, deferring to the leaders such as the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis as having made a bigger impact than he ever would.
Trump’s final pitch
Trump tried to end his contentious town hall meeting on a positive note.
Asked what he’d say to undecided voters, the Republican president declared that he’s “done a great job” in his first term and predicted that “next year is going to be better than ever before.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign declared that the president “defeated” Guthrie, the town hall moderator, and derided the NBC “Today” host as a “surrogate” for Biden’s campaign.
Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh also said that the president “masterfully handled Guthrie’s attacks and interacted warmly and effectively with the voters in the room.”