No knockouts at Biden, Trump debate 12 days before US vote.

NASHVILLE – President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden traded corruption allegations and clashed over the COVID-19 pandemic on Thursday, but without delivering a knockout 12 days before the election in a final debate that many saw as the Trump’s last big chance to change the narrative.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the debate in Nashville, Tennessee, turned out to be the relative politeness compared to the disastrous first debate last month, when Trump spent much of his time yelling at leader Biden.

This time, Trump called his Democratic opponent “Joe” and even praised NBC News moderator Kristen Welker, who had a mute button to keep order, saying, “I very much respect the way you are handling this, so far. “.

The first most heated exchanges were about mutual accusations of corruption.

Trump had signaled that he would try to hurt Biden with his pursuit of shady allegations that his son Hunter was involved in corruption in China and Ukraine while Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president.

Trump, 74, repeatedly tried to raise the issue, saying there were “damning” allegations. He embarrassed Biden, 77, by saying, “I think you owe the American people an explanation.”

Biden reversed the attack, saying his family had never shown any wrongdoing and that serious questions were mounting around Trump himself, including having a bank account in China and the failure to publish his tax returns in the United States. United.

“What they do know is that you are not paying your taxes, or you are paying taxes that are so low,” he said, referring to reports on leaked tax data that show Trump has paid at most $ 750 in federal income taxes in years. .

But Biden’s heaviest weapon, as throughout his campaign against Trump, was criticism of the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has now killed an estimated 220,000 Americans.

He warned of the arrival of a “dark winter”.

“220,000 Americans dead. If you hear nothing more I say tonight, listen to this,” Biden said, addressing the television audience. “Whoever is responsible for so many deaths should not remain president of the United States of America.”

‘DARK WINTER’

Trump, who was hospitalized with coronavirus this month but has recovered, responded by defending his push to reopen the United States as soon as possible, even as medical experts warn that more caution is needed.

“We’re turning the corner. We’re turning the corner. He’s leaving,” Trump said.

“We have a vaccine that is coming, it is ready, it will be announced in a few weeks.”

With cases rising rapidly across the country again, a Quinnipiac University survey on Thursday found that nearly six in 10 people think the coronavirus is out of control.

Trump and Biden also traded blows to the American leader’s friendship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who the president said had kept the peace on the Korean peninsula, after Biden and Obama left it “a disaster” and threatened of a “nuclear war”.

“He has talked about his good friend, who is a bully,” Biden said of the young North Korean leader.

“That is like saying we had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe, the rest of Europe,” he said. “Come on.”

Whether the showdown at Belmont University in the country music capital can really change the election is itself up for debate.

“Both candidates clearly learned important lessons from the inaugural debate that was so poorly received,” said Aaron Kall, an expert on presidential debates at the University of Michigan.

“But with only 12 days until the election and tens of millions of Americans voting early, it may be too late to fundamentally alter the upcoming election.”

An estimated 45 million Americans have joined an unprecedented wave of early voting, and polls indicate that nearly all voters have already made a firm decision. Biden is consistently ahead, and the Quinnipiac University national poll puts him at 51% versus Trump’s 41.

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