BIDEN, TRUMP TO HOLD DUELING TOWN HALLS
Events will air at same time tonight, drawing complaints
NBC was battered with criticism on Wednesday after it announced plans for a town hall event today with President Donald Trump to air opposite an already-scheduled ABC forum with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
Top Democrats, media pundits, and many journalists inside NBC and MSNBC were taken aback by the network’s choice of the 5 p.m. Pacific time slot, which will make it impossible for Americans to watch both candidates live.
“The point of a news organization is to serve the public,” Vivian Schiller, a former executive at NBC, Twitter and National Public Radio, wrote on Twitter. “This is the opposite.”
Trump and Biden were originally scheduled to face off today in Miami at a formal debate — until last week, when Trump abruptly withdrew after the Commission on Presidential Debates decided to stage the event virtually over concerns that Trump could still be contagious with the coronavirus.
Biden quickly arranged his own telecast with ABC, prompting Trump’s campaign to seek its own event that evening. After a lengthy negotiation — NBC wanted proof that the president would not pose a health risk, which it received only on Tuesday — the network announced its plans Wednesday morning.
Several people familiar with internal discussions described the network’s thinking, requesting anonymity to share private conversations.
Trump’s town hall event was patterned after a similar Biden forum that NBC had hosted on Oct. 5, the people said. It will be held at the same outdoor Miami venue, with the same format that features questions from Florida voters.
But given the conflict with Biden’s event on ABC, why not simply start Trump after the former vice president finishes?
NBC officials argued internally that such a move could be problematic because many more American households watch television later in the evening. In theory, they argued, it would grant Trump access to a larger potential live audience than Biden had for his NBC event on Oct. 5.
So why not hold the event on a different night? NBC executives have insisted that the date was their choice, the peo
ple said, and that today fit the president’s schedule: Because of the now-canceled second debate, Trump’s evening was free.
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday sought to shore up support from constituencies that not so long ago he thought he had in the bag: big business and voters in the red state of Iowa.
In a morning address to business leaders, he expressed puzzlement that they would even consider supporting Biden, arguing that his own leadership was a better bet for a strong economy. Trump campaigned later Wednesday in Iowa, a state he won handily in 2016 but where Biden is making a late push.
Biden, for his part, held a virtual fundraiser from Wilmington, Del., and was delivering pre-taped remarks to American Muslims in the evening. He did not have any public campaign events scheduled, unusual for just 20 days out from Election Day.
Tuesday night, in Pennsylvania, Trump also tried to win back a constituency that helped him in 2016 — suburban women.
“Suburban women, will you please like me?” Trump pleaded Tuesday during a rally in Johnstown, Pa., in an explicit appeal to a group polls show him losing badly. “Please, please. I saved your damned neighborhood, OK? The other thing, I don’t have much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it but I got to go quickly.”
Trailing significantly in national and swing state polls, Trump is attempting to stage a historic comeback. But his actions and rhetoric in recent days have stumped some of his allies who are trying to decipher his broader strategy.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted a doctored image of Biden in a nursing home with other elderly residents. The tweet — and the Trump campaign’s move earlier in the day to have a former White House doctor declare Biden mentally unfit — came as polls show the president trailing among senior citizens, a group he carried in 2016. One senior administration official said there have been a series of meetings with campaign officials, White House officials and Trump outside advisers on how to fix the president’s problem with senior citizens.
Kellyanne Conway, the president’s longtime political adviser, has argued to other aides that the messaging on Biden’s age needs to change, officials said.