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United States President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden will face off in their final debate at 2 p.m. Friday afternoon (NZT), one of the last high-profile opportunities for the current incumbent to change the trajectory of an increasingly controversial campaign.
Worried about losing the White House, some advisers are urging Trump to change his aggressive behavior from the first debate to a low-key style that puts Biden more directly in the spotlight. But it is not clear if the president will listen.
Biden, who has exited the campaign in favor of debate prep, hopes Trump will get intensely personal. The former vice president and his inner circle see the president’s approach primarily as an effort to distract themselves from the coronavirus, its economic fallout and other crises.
With less than two weeks left until Election Day, Biden leads the majority of national polls and has a narrower lead in the battlefield states that could decide the race. More than 42 million people have already cast their votes. The debate, moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, is one last chance for both men to present their case to a television audience of tens of millions of voters.
“The rule is that the last debates before the elections have a great impact,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who made clear the legacy of the first meeting of the candidates: “That was the most out of control presidential debate that we have. viewed. “
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Biden told reporters on Thursday in Delaware before his afternoon flight to Nashville that he had been tested for Covid-19 and the test came back negative. The White House was asked if the president had been tested but had not released an update.
AP PHOTOS
The second Trump / Biden debate takes place on Friday afternoon New Zealand time.
Trump announced Oct. 1 that he had tested positive and spent three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before returning to the White House. Last week, during a town hall-style interview on MSNBC, Trump did not specify, when asked, when it had last been tested before the first debate on Sept. 29.
Trump, who made a remarkable comeback in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, believes he can do it again by using the power of the presidency to attack his rival.
Trump on Tuesday called on Attorney General William Barr to immediately launch an investigation into the unverified claims about Biden and his son Hunter, effectively demanding that the Justice Department muddy his political opponent and drop its historic resistance to getting involved in the election.
Biden could also expect questions about his comments in a CBS interview published Thursday, in which he would not rule out adding justices to the Supreme Court. The problem has followed since the Sept. 18 death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the decision by the Republican-controlled Senate to confirm Trump’s candidate to succeed her, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
During the interview for CBS ‘ 60 minutes, Biden did not rule out studying the incorporation of members to the Supreme Court as part of a commission that he plans to appoint to analyze the reforms of the court if he is elected. He said the commission charge “would go well beyond packaging.”
Susan Walsh / AP
US President Donald Trump is unhappy with the decision to silence the microphones.
Trump, for his part, has focused on Biden’s family. He is promoting an unconfirmed New York Post report released last week citing an email in which an official at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden, who served on the company’s board, for arranging a meeting with Joe Biden during a visit to Washington in 2015. The Biden campaign has rejected Trump’s claim of wrongdoing, noting that Biden’s calendar did not show a meeting with the Burisma official.
Trump’s attacks on the Biden family have been relentless, including his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, leading to Trump’s impeachment. It is part of a determined, but so far unsuccessful, effort to lift the negatives of his opponent, as he did with Hillary Clinton four years ago.
While Biden will defend his own and his son’s record, aides said, he hopes to focus on arguing that Trump is unfit for office and will let the nation down during a confluence of crisis.
“He knows people want to know how we’re going to help working families get through the end of the month and pay the rent,” his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, said Wednesday in North Carolina. “That’s what people care about, and one of the things I love about Joe Biden – he doesn’t take care of or talk about other people’s kids.”
Patrick Semansky / AP
Debate simulators perform on stage as preparations for the second presidential debate take place.
The doublet of the first presidential debate and Trump’s three-day stint in the president’s hospital after hiring Covid-19 shook his support base and set off the alarm among Republicans who fear the White House and Senate may be disappearing. .
The belligerent tone of the initial debate was somewhat appropriate for what has been an extraordinarily ugly campaign. Amid heated clashes over the pandemic, the Supreme Court, and the integrity of the election itself, Trump refused to condemn the white supremacists who have supported him, telling a group known as the Proud Boys to “stand back. and stays on the sidelines. “
The two men frequently talked to each other and Trump interrupted, almost yelled, so often that Biden finally yelled at him, “You wanna shut up, man?”
Advisers have urged Trump, who skipped the debate prep, to show some restraint this time, allowing Biden to talk more and get into trouble with mistakes and verbal lapses. But the president has made no promises.
“Some people think, ‘Let him talk,’ because he loses the thread (of thought), he just loses it and does not speak the train of thought,” Trump said in a town hall discussion recorded in the White House Rose. Garden and broadcast on the Sinclair Broadcast Group Wednesday night. But we will see what happens. I mean, you’ll have to be there. “
Uncredited / AP
NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker is expected to moderate the debate.
After Trump’s diagnosis, the Committee on Presidential Debates ruled that the second debate, due to take place last week, was virtual. Trump resisted, causing the debate to be canceled, and instead the two men held duels in town halls, speaking at the same time from more than 1,000 miles apart.
On Thursday night, in an effort to reduce disruptions, Trump and Biden will each have their mikes cut off while their rival gives an initial two-minute response to each of the six discussion topics, the commission announced. The mute button will not feature in the open discussion portion of the debate, but it has drawn criticism from Trump.
“The mute is very unfair,” he said Wednesday as he left the White House for a campaign rally.
