US President Donald Trump is expected to step out in Thursday’s final presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden to try to close a gap in opinion polls ahead of the election 12 days away.
Trump needs to score a few hits in the televised meeting to stabilize a campaign that is struggling, in part because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 222,000 people in the United States.
Trump, a Republican, is far behind former Vice President Biden in national polls ahead of Election Day, Nov. 3, although the contest is much tighter in some battle states where the election will likely be decided.
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Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points in the latest Reuters / Ipsos national poll, conducted Oct. 20-22. His lead has slipped a couple of points in recent weeks and he’s back to where he was in September, before Trump was hospitalized with Covid-19.
Relatively few voters have yet to make up their minds, and Trump’s window to influence the outcome may be closing. A record 47 million Americans have already cast their votes, dwarfing the early voting total from the 2016 election, ahead of the debate in Nashville, Tennessee.
Trump’s campaign noted that the often combative president would attack Biden for failing to accomplish more during his nearly half century in public service and would focus on what the 74-year-old Trump alleges were corrupt practices by the Biden family. .
Advisers to the 77-year-old Biden said he needs to deliver a disciplined performance to attract swing voters and not allow Trump to get under his skin with attacks on his family, especially his son Hunter.
A Biden adviser said his advisers want him to counter Trump without appearing non-presidential. He is expected to again criticize Trump’s handling of the pandemic, arguing that it has had a disproportionate economic impact on low-wage workers.
Several states, including the state of Ohio, which has not taken place in the election, reported record single-day increases in Covid-19 infections on Thursday, evidence that the pandemic is accelerating again.
The controversial first September debate between the couple was watched by at least 73 million viewers. Trump rejected another planned debate last week after he switched to a virtual format following his Covid-19 diagnosis.
‘Rope-a-dope’
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the president would mention Biden’s long history in politics, as well as his family’s businesses.
“The clear message is that President Trump has accomplished more in 47 months than Joe Biden in 47 years. The president built the best economy in the world once and is already doing it a second time. Trump is still the political outsider, while Biden is the latest informant, ”Murtaugh said.
In the first confrontation, Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden, attacked him personally, and showed little respect for the moderator. Undecided voters, especially women, felt turned off by their actions, post-debate polls and focus groups showed.
Michael Steel, a Republican who served as a senior adviser to former House Speaker John Boehner, said Trump must step back and give Biden room to make mistakes.
“There’s probably nothing that President Trump can do in terms of attacking Biden that he didn’t already try in the first debate,” Steel said. “Now he needs to cheat, sit back and act presidential while he hounds Biden to fail and fail.”
After the first debate was marred by interruptions from both candidates, each of their microphones will be turned off while their opponent makes his two-minute introductory statement on a topic, in order to allow uninterrupted speaking time. Both microphones will be active during the discussion period that follows.
Topics for discussion will include the pandemic, race relations, climate change, and national security. The Trump campaign argued that the entire debate should focus on foreign policy.
Trump is expected to return to a line of attack that emerged in the first debate, accusing Biden and his son Hunter of unethical practices in China and Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the corruption allegations by Trump and his aides, and Biden in the first debate called them false and discredited.
Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said Trump’s personal attacks would backfire.
“We expect Trump to attack Biden and his family, and each time he does, all he does is reinforce what we have said all along: he acknowledges that he has no grounds for a second term. He has no answers to the failures of the last four years and he has no plans or vision for the next four, ”he told reporters.
Biden has been under pressure to explain his position on a push from some within his party to “pack” the Supreme Court to counter its drift to the right, expanding the number of justices from the current nine.
He said Thursday that, if elected, he would convene a bipartisan committee of academics to examine reform of a federal judicial system that he called “out of control.” He said there were alternatives to consider in addition to expanding the Supreme Court.
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