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Of: TT
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Photo: Andy Kropa / Invision / AP / TT
Katie Couric, who has long hosted the NBC Today television show.
Tonight, it’s time for US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden to make their case. But not in a debate, but in different electoral meetings, and it generates anger that it can happen at the same time.
Republican President Trump refused to join a virtual debate, despite being infected with COVID-19 and not with Democrat Biden.
Instead, there will be election meetings with questions from the audience in two different parts of the country. Trump will be in Miami, Florida, while Biden will be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
But the time, at 20.00 (02.00 Swedish time), is the same and therefore they will compete for the same television viewer at the national level. This draws criticism in the United States, in part because it is Trump who declined to debate but who still negotiated its broadcast with the television company NBC after Biden’s campaign was resolved with ABC.
“See both”
Katie Couric, a longtime host of the Today show on NBC, is critical:
“Voters should be able to see both and I don’t think many can see them,” he wrote on Twitter.
Couric believes that the plan will benefit Trump “because people like to see his unpredictability.”
David Canon, director of the School of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agrees with the critics.
Even the infected son
But he thinks it was a tactical mistake by Trump not to participate in a debate, as the president is lagging behind in opinion polls.
– I needed a debate more than Biden, says Canon.
America’s top infection control expert, Anthony Fauci, says he is highly confident that the president will no longer spread the infection. But Trump’s meeting must still be outdoors, NBC staff must keep a physical distance from him, and everyone in the audience must wear a mask.
The crown pandemic, which claimed more than 216,000 lives in the United States, is expected to take center stage during election rallies. On Wednesday, it became clear that in addition to Trump and his wife Melania, their 14-year-old son Baron also tested positive for the virus.
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