President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden participated in competing presidential town halls tonight where they discussed a range of topics, including the coronavirus pandemic, nomination of a Supreme Court justice, the economy and Roe v. Wade.
If you missed both town halls, here are some key moments from each below:
Biden’s town hall:
Trump’s town hall:
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that if he loses the election, he hopes it doesn’t mean America is as divided “as it appears the President wants us to be.”
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Biden what it would say to him about where America is today if he loses in November.
Biden argued that while Trump has worked to divide the country, he would be a president for all Americans if elected in November.
The former vice president previously told a voter at the town hall that he would hopefully go back to being a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and working with the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware, “focusing on the same issues relating to what constitutes decency and honor in this country.” He said those issues are the reason he got involved in politics.
Biden quoted his father, who he said had an expression, “Everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity.”
“And so, whether I am a defeated candidate for president beck teaching or I am elected president, it is a major element of everything that I am about. Because it reflects who we are as a nation,” Biden said.
Citing his efforts on criminal justice reform, President Trump said he has “done more for the African American community than any president with the exception of Abraham Lincoln,” noting that “a lot of people agree.”
Facts First: This is false.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, for example, signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, monumental bills whose impact dwarfed the impact of any legislation Trump has signed.
It’s also worth mentioning that Black people themselves do not, on the whole, agree with Trump’s self-assessment. Trump has had a consistently abysmal approval rating with Black citizens — just 4% in one recent Quinnipiac University poll, for example, versus 93% disapproval.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Thursday that he will demand President Trump take a Covid-19 test, and for that test to return negative, before he will participate in a debate.
He added, “I’m less concerned about me, but the people, the guys with the cameras, the people working in the, you know, the secret service guys you drive up with, all those people.”
Trump and Biden are set to debate next Thursday. The second presidential debate originally scheduled for today was canceled after Trump objected to the virtual format announced by the Commission on Presidential Debates put forward after his positive coronavirus diagnosis.
President Trump expanded on a false claim that he’s made previously, saying that “thousands of ballots” had been found in dumpsters.
“Thousands of them are dumped in dumpsters and when you see ballots with the name Trump — military ballots, from our great military, and they’re dumped in garbage cans,” the President said in the NBC town hall.
He went on to claim that the “thousands of ballots” were found with “my name on it.”
Facts First: This is false. There have been two incidents where ballots were found in a dumpster or trash can: 99 ballots heading to voters in New Jersey and nine ballots “incorrectly discarded” by a temporary worker in Pennsylvania.
In New Jersey, the Justice Department charged a mail worker with two felonies for tossing 1,875 pieces of mail that included 99 ballots in two dumpsters. The ballots, which were being sent to voters, were immediately delivered after the US Postal Service learned about them being tossed in the trash.
This isn’t the first time the President has lied about ballots being found in the trash. He’s repeatedly lied about ballots being found in a trash can in Pennsylvania.
According to federal and local authorities, an election worker improperly threw out nine military ballots in Luzerne County. The Justice Department initially said all nine ballots were marked for Trump, then deleted its initial statement and issued a new one saying seven were Trump votes. Local officials said they would try to reach the affected voters and fix the ballots.
Former Vice President Joe Biden slammed President Trump for not helping the jobless after the $600 weekly supplement for unemployment benefits – which Congress passed as part of its $2 trillion relief package — lapsed in late July.
“And then what happened was, when the first round of money for unemployment, enhanced unemployment went by, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything,” Biden said.
Facts first: This is false. The day after congressional talks to extend the federal boost to unemployment benefits collapsed, Trump signed an executive measure to use $44 billion in federal disaster aid to provide $300 a week to the jobless.
The effort provides out-of-work Americans in 49 states and the District of Columbia with these funds for up to six weeks. The money has already been fully distributed in many states.
South Dakota declined to participate in the Lost Wages Assistance program.
Joe Biden on Thursday said he will reverse the Trump administration executive orders that a questioner described as “dangerous and discriminatory.”
Unfurling an old yarn, Biden told the story of seeing two men, “well-dressed,” kissing one another while he was with his father many years ago.
“My dad turned to me,” Biden recalled. “He said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.’”
Biden then returned to the present day and declared, “There should be zero discrimination.”
“There is no reason to suggest that there should be any right denied to your daughter,” Biden said, “that your other daughter has a right to be and do. None. Zero.”
The former vice president also noted that his late son Beau Biden, who served as Delaware’s attorney general, backed the state’s first transgender rights law.
“I’m proud of that,” Biden said.
CNN’s Dana Bash said Thursday that President Trump refusal to say if he was tested on the day for the first presidential debate is “not something you forget.”
At Trump’s town hall with NBC, he said he did not recall taking a coronavirus test before the first presidential debate with former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I don’t know, I don’t even remember. I test all the time. I can tell you this. After the debate, like, I guess, a day or so, I think it was Thursday evening, maybe even late Thursday evening, uh, I tested positive. That’s when I first found out,” the President said.
Bash cited former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s statement about the severity of his coronavirus diagnosis and hospitalization and his call for Americans to take the pandemic seriously.
“The leaders of this country, meaning the President, even though he didn’t say it, have to stop being so cavalier about this,” Bash said. “And not getting a test and putting in danger the people who are in that room, including his opponent for the presidency is as cavalier and careless as it can be.”
Answering a question about vaccines, former vice president Joe Biden talked about the coronavirus’ impact on children.
“Children are getting the virus, not with as serious consequences, but we haven’t, there’s been no studies done yet on vaccines for children,” he said.
Facts first: Biden is correct about research in the US, though a leading drugmaker just this week revealed plans to include children in its vaccine research. Pfizer plans to start testing its experimental coronavirus vaccine in children as young as 12, the researcher helping lead the trial told CNN on Tuesday. It will be the first coronavirus vaccine trial to include children in the United States.
NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie, who was moderating President’s Trump town hall, asked about the QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory Trump had retweeted earlier this week claiming Osama bin Laden was still alive and that the man killed in the raid was a body double.
Trump defended his actions, saying, “That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody, and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don’t take a position.”
Facts First: This is a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up. The facts around the killing of bin Laden are not a debatable opinion.
In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces during a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A DNA test was conducted, confirming it was bin Laden. He was buried at sea.
Those are the facts.
You can read more of the facts behind this conspiracy theory here.
Joe Biden said that while Donald Trump deserves “a little” credit for some of his foreign policy moves, he does not deserve “a whole lot” because of the way he has hurt the United States’ standing on the international stage.
The response came to a pro-Trump questioner who argued that the Republican leader has scored a host of wins on the international stage. When asked directly is Trump’s foreign police “deserve some credit,” Biden bluntly responded, “A little, but not a whole lot.”
Biden added that he does “compliment the President” on deals he helped strike that had Muslims nations normalizing relations with Israel, but that other than that, “we’re not very well trusted around the world.”
“I would respectfully suggest no, there is no plan, no coherent plan, for foreign policy,” Biden said. “He’s pulled out of almost every international organization, he gets laughed at when he goes to — literally, not figuratively — when he goes to the United Nations.”
A boast Trump delivered during his 2018 speech to the United Nations drew laughs from the international audience.
Confronted with the harm caused by fracking, Biden doubled down on his opposition to a ban on the practice.
He conceded that the emission of methane was a concern, along with small earthquakes caused by drilling, but argued that could be dealt with by being “managed very, very well.”
Biden then pivoted to his support, now and in the past, for renewable energy projects and investment. He pointed to his work, during the Obama administration, on the response to the economic crisis of 2008 and efforts to bring down the cost of wind and solar energy.
“It has great, great promise,” he said. “And it’s also the fastest growing employer in the energy industry.”
Biden’s answer matched his broader framing on most climate change questions, which is to make the argument for clean energy in the context of creating new and better-paying jobs to American workers.
Still, he made sure to distance himself from what he described as “the new green deal,” the ambitious climate and economic framework supported by many progressives.
To the specific concerns about carbon-emitting extraction, Biden focused on “carbon capture” technology that, he said, would allow for a wider transition to green energy to happen while still using “some gasses.”
The goal, he reiterated, is to achieve “net-zero emissions” in the creation of energy – one of the top goals of climate activists across the world.
After hesitating to make the commitment for weeks, President Trump said he would accept a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, but he continued to sow doubt on the election results and made baseless claims about Obama administration officials spying on his 2016 campaign.
In his exchange with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, he made a variety of false claims about “unsolicited” and “fraudulent ballots.” You can read CNN’s fact checks on thrown out ballots and unsolicited ballots.
Presented with the claim by his own FBI director that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Trump again took a swipe at FBI Director Christopher Wray, saying “oh really? Then he’s not doing a very good job.”
Asked why he seemed to be laying the groundwork for doubt in the election results, the President claimed “I don’t want that to happen.”
“I want it to be clean and I…I really feel we’re going to win, but I want this to be clean,” Trump said.
President Trump vowed to “take care of” the DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, program, an Obama-era program that shields certain undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, but provided few details.
Trump said months ago during an interview with Telemundo he would be signing a “very major immigration bill” in the form of an executive order, but one has yet to come to fruition. He reiterated Thursday that something “very, very good” was coming.
Asked whether he would pursue his previous efforts to make cuts to the DACA program, he said he would “take care of” the program.
“We are going to take care of DACA. We are going to take care of Dreamers. It’s working right now, we’re negotiating different aspects of immigration and immigration law,” Trump said, touting wall construction at the US-Mexico border.
“We want people to come into our country. They have to come in, legally, but we are working very hard on the DACA program, and you will be, I think, very happy over the course of the next year,” he added.
But pressed by moderator Savannah Guthrie on the fact that his administration has systematically curtailed the program, he blamed the coronavirus pandemic and cases in Mexico, even though there are more cases per 100,000 people in the US.
President Trump said at Thursday’s NBC town hall that he doesn’t expect his Supreme Court nominee, judge Amy Coney Barrett, to rule a certain way on two hot-button issues — a potential case over the results of the 2020 general election or a case revisiting abortion access.
“Believe it or not, I never talked about it,” Trump claimed.
The President also defended his decision to appoint Barrett so close to the presidential election, arguing that, “If you put the shoe on the other foot, if (Democrats) had this, they would do it.”
Trump also asserted that “the whole ball game changed when I saw the way that they treated Justice (Brett) Kavanaugh” — Trump’s previous Supreme Court nominee and now Supreme Court justice, who faced intense scrutiny over allegations of sexual assault during his confirmation.
The President also carefully toed the line on whether the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion, Roe v. Wade, should be overturned. He said he did not tell Barrett how to rule on the issue.
“I think it would be inappropriate to talk to her about it,” Trump said, adding, “I would like to see a brilliant jurist, a brilliant person who has done this in great depth and has actually skirted this issue for a long time, make a decision. And that’s why I chose her. I think that she’s going to make a great decision.”
While most anti-abortion conservatives argue that the the law should be overturned, Trump said he didn’t want to be accused of signaling Barrett either way.
CNN previously reported on several instances where Barrett appeared to advocate for anti-abortion causes.
In 2006, Barrett signed onto a “right to life ad,” sponsored by a group that opposes abortion. Ten years later, Barrett told an audience at Jacksonville University she believed that while Roe wouldn’t be overturned, access to abortion could eventually be limited.
She also initially failed to disclose two talks she gave in 2013 hosted by two anti-abortion student groups on paperwork provided to the Senate ahead of her confirmation hearing to become the next Supreme Court justice.
Watch the moment:
Former vice president Joe Biden claimed that President Donald Trump said injecting bleach could help combat the virus.
“President Trump says things like…crazy stuff he’s walking away from now, ‘inject bleach in your arm and that’s going to work,’” Biden said. “I’m being a bit — I’m not being facetious though; he actually said these things.”
Facts First: This is misleading. Biden was recalling a moment from a Trump briefing that attracted broad derision. Biden, however, overstated some of the specifics.
During an April 23 press briefing, which included a discussion of tests that appeared to show disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the coronavirus on surfaces in lab studies, Trump expressed interest in exploring the possibility of “injection inside or almost a cleaning” with disinfectants. Here’s what he said:
“(T)hen I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
President Trump’s town hall with NBC has ended. Trump was pressed by moderator Savannah Guthrie on his coronavirus response, the Supreme Court and immigration.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s town hall on ABC is still on air and will wrap at 9:30 p.m. ET.
Both Trump and Biden’s competing town halls began at 8 p.m. ET.
President Trump claimed the US was “expected to lose 2,200,000 people and maybe more than that” from coronavirus.
Facts First: This is misleading.
Trump is likely citing a report posted in March by scholars from the Imperial College in London that predicted that a total of 2.2 million Americans could die from Covid-19 if no preventative measures were installed on any level of society.
In other words, that would be the loss of lives if no action were taken at all to mitigate it.
The report did not analyze what would happen if just the federal government took no action against the virus but rather what would occur if there were absolutely no “control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.”
Joe Biden said he is “not a fan” of court-packing, but whether he ultimately seeks to push for more seats on the Supreme Court depends on how Senate Republicans handle the confirmation process of Amy Coney Barrett.
If that does not take place and Republicans rush to confirm Barrett before the election, he said, “I’m open to considering what happens from that point on.”
Biden said he would take a clearer position on court-packing before the election, after seeing how the confirmation process plays out. But he also said he was hesitant to take a specific position at this stage because he wants attention to focus on what confirming Barrett and handing conservatives a 6-3 Supreme Court majority would mean for abortion rights, health care, LGBTQ rights and more.
Here’s the moment:
Joe Biden had biting words for Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s most recent nomination to the Supreme Court, on Thursday, faulting her for not directly answering many questions and not laying out “much of a judicial philosophy.”
The Senate held days of hearings on Barrett’s nomination this week, but because Republicans control the legislative body and few appear willing to break with the Republican president.
Biden said, because he was traveling, he was unable to watch the hearings, but had read about them.
The question came from a man named Nathan, who asked about the safeguards in place to ensure LGBTQ rights if another conservative justice is approved.
“I think there’s great reason to be concerned for the LGBTQ,” Biden said. “I fought very hard for a long time to make sure there’s equality across the board.”
Biden said he also has concerns for the future of health care, an issue that is top of mind to a number of voters and the topics that most Democratic senators focused on during their time in the confirmation hearings.
