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Donald Trump has scheduled a televised city hall event to air at the same time Thursday night as a separate city hall with rival Joe Biden, creating an audience duel and split-screen show for a divided country on the night. that was supposed to happen. it will be the second presidential debate.
The dueling events came after Trump withdrew from a virtual debate with Biden proposed by the presidential debating committee to replace the normal pairing of the two men live on stage together, after Trump tested positive for coronavirus.
“I’m not wasting my time on a virtual debate,” Trump said at the time, but campaign experts feared he had wasted one of the few remaining opportunities to positively contrast his opponent and correct his listing campaign.
Trump may now have earned a new opportunity to do so by arranging to receive live questions from Florida voters in Miami, and the event will air on the NBC network, as well as two sister cable networks, CNBC and MSNBC, and It will be hosted by journalist Savannah. Guthrie.
Biden’s event, hosted by George Stephanopoulos, will take place in Philadelphia and will air on ABC, but not cable. Both events were scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET.
NBC told viewers Wednesday that health officials had determined it was safe for producers and other network personnel to interact with Trump at the event, and safe for attending voters. The network issued a statement from Clifford Lane, clinical director of the National Institutes of Health, saying that Trump “was not spreading infectious viruses.”
The 2020 presidential debate schedule was altered by Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, which was announced on October 2 and followed by a three-night hospital stay by the president.
Federal health guidelines call for a two-week quarantine for known Covid cases, prompting the debating committee to propose an event online. Trump, 74, and Biden, 77, are both in high-risk health categories.
Trump refused. “That’s not what the debate is about. Do you sit behind a computer and have a debate? “he said.” It’s ridiculous. “
With Trump lagging behind in polling averages, political analysts say he needs to find a way to shake up the race for a chance to win and, with millions of early votes already cast, few undecided voters and approval ratings remain. Biden’s staff is tall. Trump had little time to make such a move.
While Biden’s counter-scheduling on Thursday night would avoid a situation where the former vice president had the political arena to himself for just one night, the format of the dueling city hall does not create obvious opportunities for Trump to rebut Biden in real time.
What potentially compounds Trump’s difficulties is the fact that the city hall format, which takes Trump out of his bubble of comfortable campaign rallies and sympathetic Fox News interviews, is not one in which Trump has excelled.
A Trump outing at a Philadelphia city hall last month found the president writhing in the spotlight, making remarks that attendees later called obvious lies and even interrupting interrogators.
The municipal duels came about through a series of denials, taunts, threats, and setbacks by Trump and his campaign. First, the Trump campaign challenged Biden to an additional in-person debate, which the Biden field rejected, and then Trump attempted to revive an in-person debate on Thursday, also declined.
Already low, Trump’s poll numbers fell after the candidates’ first debate, and so far only, on Sept. 30, in which Trump interrupted Biden so much that the Democrat told the president to “shut up, man.” .
