Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris will meet on the stage of the debate on Wednesday night (US time).
The 90-minute debate will take place at 9 pm ET at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City. The prime-time debate comes at a point where the coronavirus has re-emerged as the main problem following the hospitalization of President Donald Trump.
Latest updates from the vice-presidential debate:
10) Harris was asked if Americans should get vaccinated and if she would. Harris says that if the doctors “tell us to take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us we must accept it, I will not accept it. “
Vice President Mike Pence says a vaccine will be produced in record time. He says, “I just ask you to stop playing politics with people’s lives.”
9) Pence responded, at first, kindly, saying it was a “privilege” to share the stage with Harris. But he backed all of President Donald Trump’s response to the virus. Since February, more than 7 million Americans have been infected, more than 212,000 have died, and last week, the president himself contracted Covid-19.
“From day one, President Donald Trump has put America’s health first,” Pence said.
8) Sen. Kamala Harris called the response to the Covid-19 pandemic under Donald Trump the “greatest failure” of any US administration.
“The American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” said Harris, a running mate of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
7) The debate has started.
6) Candidates will be seated just over 12 feet apart, as opposed to the original 7 feet that had been planned.
5) A pair of plexiglass barriers will separate the two and there will be no opening or closing statements from the participants. Pence and Harris will be sitting behind a desk, unlike the presidential debate. As with the presidential debate, the candidates will be tested in advance and will not shake hands.
4) For the live audience, there will be “a small number of ticketed guests” who will be screened before the debate, but will be escorted if they do not wear masks during the event.
3) The format of the debate will be similar to the widely criticized first presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden. It will be divided into nine segments of approximately 10 minutes each and there will be no commercial breaks, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Unlike the presidential debate, the topics are not disclosed in advance.
2) Susan Page, USA Today Washington bureau chief, will moderate. Page has covered six presidential administrations and 10 presidential elections.
1) The moderator will ask Pence an opening question first, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond, the commission said. Page will use the rest of the time in the segment for a more in-depth discussion of the topic.
Page will also sit 12 feet away from the candidates.
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