CANDIDATES CLASH IN DISTANT, DUELING TOWN HALL EVENTS
Biden, Trump display sharp differences over their approaches to coronavirus pandemic, other issues
Separated by five states and two television news outlets, President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden held dueling and distant town halls on competing networks Thursday night, replacements for a long-planned debate.
The separate events — with Trump on NBC from Miami and Biden on ABC from Philadelphia — provided a clear contrast in the candidates’ approaches to the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.
Under rapid-fire direct questioning, Trump questioned the wearing of masks, refused to denounce the QAnon conspiracy theory, declined to say whether he was tested for the coronavirus before the last debate and battled with NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie over his position on White supremacy, which he denounced.
He said FBI Director Christopher Wray was not “doing a very good job” because he did not embrace Trump’s unsupported claims of widespread voter fraud. The president also predicted a “red wave” on Nov. 3.
“They are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that,” he said about QAnon, after first saying he knew nothing about the movement, which was recently banned from Facebook and YouTube after sharing false stories online, including ones about Democrats abusing children.
While Trump sparred with Guthrie, the Biden town hall proceeded with a different tone, with moderator George Stephanopoulos deferring more to audience questions about issues such as taxes, the pandemic and Biden’s outreach to Black voters.
“He knew full well how serious it was,” Biden said of Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “He said he didn’t tell anybody because he was afraid that Americans would panic. Americans don’t panic, he panicked, he didn’t say a word to anybody.”
“And then they talk, ‘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.”
“When a president doesn’t wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask ... people say, ‘Well, it mustn’t be that important.’”
Biden reiterated the importance of masks, saying again that if he were president he would pressure governors and local leaders to institute mask mandates.
He criticized Trump at leng th for not modeling good behavior by wearing a mask.
“The words of a president matter — no matter whether they’re good, bad or indifferent, they matter. And when a president doesn’t wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then people say: ‘ Well, it must not be that important,’” Biden said.
Biden and Trump were both on home turf Thursday night — Biden in the state where he grew up and the city where his campaign is headquartered, Trump in his adopted state that he now claims as his residence.
As Pennsylvanians took turns introducing themselves and asking Biden questions, the former vice president often responded with how well he knows the city or town where they live.
The town halls took place on what would have been the night of the second scheduled presidential debate, from which Trump withdrew after the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced plans to hold it remotely as a health precaution related to the president’s recent coronavirus infection.
After a three-night hospital stay, Trump’s doctor has said he has tested negative for the virus and is no longer contagious.
The president said under questioning by Guthrie that his lungs were “infected” during the coronavirus scare and that he had a “little bit of a temperature.”
Trump did not answer repeated questions about whether he was tested on the day of the first debate, and would not say when his last negative test was. “I don’t know. I test all the time.” He said he “probably” took a test on the day of the debate.
“As president I can’t just be locked in a room someplace and not do anything,” he said. “I can’t be in a basement.”
The first one-on-one debate between Biden and Trump, on Sept. 29, was widely seen as a chaotic and uninformative event, ref lective of the nation’s growing polarization and a declining level of civil discourse.
Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and engaged in frequent arguments with the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News.
Biden also called Trump a “clown” and told him to “shut up.” There was little discussion of substantive differences.
Polling that followed that initial meeting, which included the period during Trump’s treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, generally showed Biden’s lead increasing slightly.
Nationally, Biden has a 12-point lead in a Washington Post average of national polls, and 7- or 8point leads in the crucial Great Lakes states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which f lipped to Trump in 2016 to give him the presidency.
But political consultants in both major political parties do not consider the current advantage predictive of the election result. Trump eked out narrow wins in all three of those states after trailing by similar or slightly slimmer margins in public polling averages three weeks before the election. Those same polling averages, while not predicting Trump’s eventual victory, did show that he was able to close the gap in the final weeks.
As the town halls opened, the pandemic continued to rage across the United States, with 62,000 new cases reported Thursday, the highest level since late July. After infecting Trump, his wife, his youngest son and several of his top advisers, there were signs that the virus was not yet finished disrupting the campaign.
Since leaving the hospital, Trump has resumed his near-daily mass rallies, heading often to states where the virus is rampaging to speak before thousands gathered in tight crowds and not wearing masks. Members of his family and other campaign surrogates have also been meeting with large crowds.
Biden has also begun regular travel, but he has intentionally avoided crowds, choosing other venues, including drive-in events where participants do not leave their vehicles and honk their approval.
For weeks before his town hall, Trump has attacked the host network, NBC News, saying it has shown a bias in favor of Biden, while liberal groups and even employees of the network have objected to the company’s decision to schedule a town hall with Trump in the same hour that ABC News was planning a similar event with Biden.
A letter signed by more than 100 Hollywood figures, including comedians Amy Schumer, Ben Stiller and Sarah Silverman, accused the network was “enabling the president’s bad behavior.” (Schumer is the niece of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.)
The network responded by saying it had tried to persuade ABC News to move the timing of its previously scheduled event.
“We aired a town hall with Vice President Biden on Oct. 5 at 8 p.m.,” NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde said in response. “If we were to move our town hall with President Trump to a later time slot we would be violating our commitment to offer both campaigns access to the same audience in the same forum.”
Trump tweeted Thursday that the network was “fake” and has for several days told his crowds that NBC treated Biden too kindly.
“So you know I’m being set up tonight, right?” Trump told a North Carolina crowd earlier Thursday. “So, I’m doing this town hall with Concast — C-O-N, right? Con, because it’s a con job. ... So, I’m doing it, and it’s NBC. The worst.”
Comcast is the parent company of NBC. Trump said he agreed to the hour on the network, where he once hosted a reality show, “because we get a free hour on television.”
Television time so far this cycle has been relatively scant for Trump, and the Biden campaign has dominated his on the TV airwaves. The Biden campaign announced Thursday that it had raised $383 million in September and entered the final weeks of the campaign with $432 million left in the bank, an astronomical amount.
The Trump campaign has not announced its September fundraising haul, but it has been canceling millions of dollars in television reservations on a weekly basis in recent months. Senior Trump advisers have complained about a lack of financial planning by the campaign’s prior leadership.