President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden faced off tonight during the last 2020 presidential debate, where they discussed the coronavirus pandemic, foreign interference in US elections, immigration and more.
If you are just tuning in, here are some key lines and moments from the night:
Living under the coronavirus pandemic
Health care
Foreign interference in US elections
Children separated from their parents at the border
Relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
How New York state responded to the pandemic
Whether to shut down the US economy again due to Covid-19
President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden just wrapped up their second and final presidential debate of the 2020 election.
We want to know what you thought about it.
Tell us what impact it had on you, using the form below.
A CNN instant poll of debate watchers finds that 53% of the watchers thought Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won the final presidential debate. Meanwhile, 39% said Donald Trump emerged a winner.
Keep in mind: The poll represents a sample set of debate watchers and is not representative of the country overall. In this set of debate watchers, about 32% of people were Democratic, 31% were Republicans and the rest were independent.
Arguably, the debate did not do much to change any candidate’s preferences. Before the debate, among this group, Biden had a 55% favorable rating. It inched up to 56% after the debate. President Trump had a 42% favorable rating before the debate and it dropped to 41% after the debate.
Watchers were also asked if they thought the candidates’ attacks on each other were fair. About 73% said Biden’s attacks on Trump were fair. Only 26% said they weren’t fair.
In contrast, 50% said Trump’s attacks on Biden were fair but 49% of debate watchers said they were not fair.
“To me, that suggests the race leaves this debate as it entered it, which right now, as you know, is advantage Biden,” CNN’s David Chalian reports.
More on the poll: The CNN post-debate poll was conducted by SSRS by telephone and includes interviews with 585 registered voters who watched the Oct. 22 presidential debate. Results among debate-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points.
Respondents were originally interviewed earlier this month either by telephone or online, and indicated they planned to watch the debate and would be willing to be re-interviewed when it was over. Respondents initially reached online are members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative probability-based panel.
Watch CNN’s David Chalian break down the results:
At the end of tonight’s final presidential debate, President Trump kept a similar lead in speaking time he maintained throughout the debate, speaking for approximately three more minutes than former Vice President Joe Biden.
The Biden campaign said it feels Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden successfully “flipped the script” on President Trump during tonight’s debate as he tried to make issue of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. Biden instead turned the focus to the President’s taxes – a moment the campaign feels where he delivered well.
“Biden put him on the defensive with his answers about Trump’s taxes,” a Biden campaign adviser said. “Completely flipped the script on him.”
Biden also capped off this section of the debate arguing the election isn’t about the two candidates’ families but instead about the American family – a key message the campaign had hoped he would drive home in this debate.
This was also one of those moments where Biden looked directly to camera, a strategy he leaned into more heavily after his first debate as his advisers have felt it is a way to connect with voters.
As Joe Biden was boarding his flight from Nashville to Wilmington, he briefly took a few questions from the press. Asked how he believes the debate went, Biden said, “Well, that’s for the public to judge. I felt good about it and I thought the moderator did a great job of making it run smoothly and so it was much…much more rational debate than the first one,” he said. “Got a chance to speak to the American public more, so thank you all very much.”
On a call with reporters following tonight’s debate, the Trump campaign unsurprisingly claimed victory.
“Joe Biden has been a Washington politician for almost 50 years and now he says he’ll get it right. The President nailed it tonight. Joe Biden is all talk and no action. President Trump won this debate in a blowout, and it’s little wonder why Joe Biden doesn’t want to do anymore,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told those on the call.
CNN’s Jake Tapper responded to tonight’s presidential debate, saying President Trump had delivered a relatively normal performance, especially compared to the first debate which Tapper described at the time as a “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.”
“It’s fair to say that Trump supporters and Republican office holders can relax for the night. They can exhale,” continued Tapper. “He didn’t set himself on fire tonight like he did at the first debate.”
“[But] I mean, he did lie like Pinocchio,” added Tapper, referring to the fictional literary character whose nose grew each time he told another falsehood.
Tapper also said the President had even managed to land few clean hits on former vice president Joe Biden on topics including the 1994 crime bill, and Biden’s record as a career politician.
Watch the moment:
In a calmer presidential debate, President Trump repeatedly talked about red states and blue states, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip said.
“I think the President really walked back into that trap, because if you listen to him day-to-day, like we all do, you hear the same content… It happened on the debate stage in a calmer tone, but it still isn’t bridging the gap with the voters in the middle,” Phillip said.
The President “kept doing something that I think Joe Biden actually tried to exploit, which is dividing the country into red states and blue states,” she added.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden gave a message of unity.
“If you watch the ads that are on television for the Biden campaign right now, the message right now is not about, you know, coronavirus. It’s not about fracking. It’s not about any of those things. It’s about unity. It’s about bringing the country together,” Phillips said.
Former vice president Joe Biden said in tonight’s debate: “The expectation is we’ll have another 200,000 Americans dead the time between now and the end of the year.”
Facts First: This needs context. One study published in October in the medical journal JAMA showed that there were more than 225,000 excess deaths in a five-month period at the start of the year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, compared to past years. (Excess deaths are the number of deaths beyond what historic numbers of deaths have been in a similar time period.) The study then predicted that the total number of excess deaths would likely be greater than 400,000. But as of Thursday evening, 223,000 Americans have lost their lives to Covid-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
These are merely projections. The latest forecast from an influential coronavirus model projects about 315,000 deaths by December 31. That’s about 92,000 additional American lives lost beyond the current death toll. There is a range of predicted deaths in this model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The worst-case scenario is if US social distancing mandates are eased. The model projects fewer deaths if everyone wears masks.
While attacking the 1994 crime bill that Joe Biden supported, President Trump claimed that Biden called the Black community “super predators.”
In 1994, Trump said, the Black community was “called, and he called them ‘super predators’ and he said that. He said it.”
Facts First: This is false. Biden never called Blacks “super predators.”
Then-first lady Hillary Clinton used the term “super predators” in a 1996 speech in New Hampshire in support of the 1994 crime bill. Biden did warn in a 1993 speech of “predators on our streets” who were “beyond the pale” in support of the crime bill. The bill itself has come under heavy criticism in recent years for being among the policies that led to mass incarceration, disproportionately affecting Black men.
But Biden himself rejected the theory of super predators.
In a 1997 hearing arguing that most youths in the justice system weren’t violent, Biden said most youth weren’t “super predators.”
“In 1994, there were about 1.5 million juvenile delinquency cases,” Biden said then. “Less than 10% of those cases involved violent crimes. So when we talk about the juvenile justice system, we have to remember that most of the youth involved in the system are not the so-called ‘super predators.’ ”
In attacking Joe Biden over his handling of the H1N1 epidemic, President Trump said Biden had handled the epidemic poorly for the Obama administration and it was “a total disaster.”
“And frankly, he ran the H1N1 swine flu and it was a total disaster. Far less lethal, but it was a total disaster,” Trump said. “Had that had this kind of numbers, 700,000 people would be dead right now, but it was a far less lethal disease.”
Facts First: This claim is misleading and needs context. The swine flu killed an estimated 12,500 Americans and Trump praised the Obama administration’s early handling of it.
Trump said the Obama administration’s handling of the swine flu was “a total disaster,” claiming 700,000 would have died if the swine flu had been more deadly. Trump’s claim appears to be citing an article from the Wall Street Journal opinion page and not an academic study.
In 2009, Trump actually praised the Obama administration’s early handling of the swine flu outbreak.
“It’s going to be handled,” Trump said on Fox News. “It’s going to come. It’s going to be bad. And maybe it will be worse than the normal flu seasons. And it’s going to go away. I think it is being handled fine. I think the words are right.”
Later in the interview, Trump downplayed the swine flu and referenced the false assertion that vaccines might cause autism (there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism).
“It’s called the flu,” Trump said. “Have you had the flu many times, Neil (Cavuto)? Probably. You know, we all have.”
Joe Biden claimed President Trump’s failure to contain the coronavirus or prevent the resulting economic downturn has left millions of people without jobs and health insurance.
“The fact is that he’s already cost the American people because of his terrible handling of the Covid virus and economic spillover. Ten million people have lost their private insurance,” Biden said.
Facts first: Biden’s claim needs context.
The source of the statistic, Biden’s campaign said, is a July Urban Institute study that estimated 10.1 million people would lose coverage as a result of a Covid-related job loss in the last three quarters of 2020. However, Biden failed to mention that most would regain insurance elsewhere.
The study predicted that about 32% of the 10.1 million would switch to the employer-sponsored insurance of another family member. Another 28% would enroll in Medicaid, and 6% would sign up for other coverage, primarily on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, where many would receive federal premium subsidies.
Only about a third, or 3.5 million people, would be left uninsured, the study estimates.
However, the actual number of people who have lost their job-based coverage isn’t known. There are various estimates out there, and some early data indicate that some employers that furloughed workers continued to provide them with health insurance — at least in the first few months of the pandemic.
Echoing comments he made during last week’s town hall, President Trump claimed nobody has done more for the Black community than him, with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln.
Facts First: This is false. It’s absurd to say Lincoln is a “possible” exception; emancipating enslaved people was obviously more important for Black Americans than anything Trump has done.
President Lyndon B. Johnson also 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.
Joe Biden repeated his claim that President Trump wants to end the payroll tax that funds Social Security.
“If in fact he continues to withhold — his plan to withhold the tax on Social Security, Social Security will be bankrupt by 2023. With no way to make up for it,” Biden said.
Facts First: This is not quite true. Trump signed an executive measure in August giving employers the ability to defer Social Security’s payroll taxes until the end of the year.
When he signed the action, the President said that if he wins reelection, he’ll push to terminate the levy in 2021. Asked by Democrats to assess the impact of eliminating the tax, the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary said it would deplete the Social Security trust fund within three years if there were no alternative source of revenue.
The White House has said that Trump was referring to forgiving the deferred amount, not canceling the levy. The Treasury Department has said that the executive measure will not harm the Social Security trust funds because the deferral is temporary, and the funds must be repaid.
Only Congress has the power to eliminate the payroll tax, either temporarily or permanently.
President Trump claimed that while he “sold tank busters to Ukraine,” the Obama administration sold “pillows and sheets.”
Facts First: Trump is being hyperbolic about the Obama administration. Obama did refuse to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, but he didn’t send mere pillows; he sent counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees and night vision devices, among other things.
You can read a full fact check here.
President Trump falsely claimed in tonight’s debate that Russia is meddling in the election to defeat him.
Facts First: It’s false to suggest that Russia wants Trump to lose. In fact, senior US intelligence officials announced months ago that Russia is actively meddling in the election to hurt Biden.
The top US intelligence official for election security, William Evanina, announced in August that the Russian government is interfering in the 2020 election to hurt Biden’s candidacy, primarily by spreading disinformation about alleged “corruption” by Biden and his family regarding Ukraine.
Russia is also trying to “denigrate” Biden on social media, according to Evanina’s statement, and Facebook has already taken down Russian-backed fake accounts targeting liberal voters.
The Russian government also interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win, according to the US intelligence community. Trump has repeatedly rejected and questioned this finding, too.
CNN previously analyzed Trump’s claims that “there has been nobody tougher” as president on Russia than him. This is a false narrative. Trump’s administration has taken some tough steps against Russia, but Trump himself has rejected widely held US foreign policy views and aligned himself with the Kremlin on issues including Syria, NATO, election-meddling, and more.
They got the same question. But you couldn’t tell from their answers.
Asked what they would do to fight the disproportionate effects of chemical and fossil fuel pollution on communities of color, Joe Biden said he would ramp up regulations. President Trump suggested that the illnesses connected to living in the shadows of those refineries and plants was an economic boon to the afflicted families.
“The families we’re talking about are employed heavily and they’re making more money than they’ve ever made,” Trump said, pivoting hard to a favorite talking point. ‘“If you look at the kind of numbers that we produced for Hispanic or Black or Asian, it’s nine times greater, the percentage gained than it was under — in three years — than it was under 8 years of the two of them, to put it nicely,” he added – presumably referencing the unemployment numbers among minorities before the pandemic struck.
Biden spoke more fluently about the issue, which was familiar from the Democratic primary debates – and mocked Trump’s apparent ignorance.
“My response is those people live on what they call fence-lines. (Trump) doesn’t understand this,” Biden said. “They live near chemical plants, that in fact pollute, chemical plants and oil plants and refineries that pollute.”
Biden described growing up near Claymont, Delaware, in an area near the Delaware River with a glut of oil refineries.
“When my mom got in the car with the first frost, there would be an oil slick on the window,” Biden said. “That’s why so many people in my state were dying and getting cancer. The fact is the frontline communities, it doesn’t matter what you’re paying them. It matters how you’re keeping them safe.”
As an example of how he’s been tough on Russia, President Trump said he had gotten NATO member nations to increase their contributions to fund the alliance “to guard against Russia.”
“I’ve got the NATO countries to put up an extra $130 billion, going to $420 billion a year,” Trump said. “That’s to guard against Russia.”
Facts First: This is misleading. Trump was using actual figures but describing them inaccurately.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in November 2019 that non-US NATO members were expected to add a total of $130 billion to their defense budgets between 2016 and the end of 2020 — not $130 billion more per year. By the end of 2024, Stoltenberg has said, the total was expected to be $400 billion over 2016 levels.
However, the coronavirus pandemic might impact members’ spending plans. In an email in August, NATO spokesperson Peggy Beauplet referred CNN to the transcript of a Stoltenberg news conference in July where he encouraged members to continue to invest in defense but acknowledged, “Covid-19 has created serious economic problems. And it will impact the budget situation for all allies. And I understand that allies will be faced with some very difficult and demanding decisions.”
President Trump claimed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “dancing on the streets in Chinatown in San Francisco,” after his administration enacted restrictions on travel from China.
Facts First: This is false. Amid fears of anti-Asian bigotry related to the pandemic, Pelosi did go to San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February and did urge people to visit, saying it was safe. But contrary to Trump’s repeated claims, she did not call for a Chinatown parade, parties, a street fair or a march; she was not holding a street fair or a rally, and she was not dancing; she simply walked around, visited businesses and a temple, ate dim sum, and spoke to the media.
After her visit to Chinatown, Pelosi said, “we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come. It’s lovely here. The food is delicious, the shops are prospering, the parade was great. Walking tours continue. Please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown.”
So, while Pelosi did speak positively about Chinatown, she was not dancing on the streets.
President Trump claimed Thursday: “We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall.”
Facts first: This is false.
The Trump administration is nearing 400 miles of new border wall system, but has not surpassed that benchmark yet. The majority of construction is swapping out old, dilapidated design for new, enhanced wall system. Only a small share that’s been constructed has gone up where no wall previously existed.
Earlier Thursday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the administration has “completed almost 400 miles of the new border wall system in high priority locations like San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley Sectors.”
According to US Customs and Border Protection, 371 miles have been completed, as of Monday (Oct. 19). The administration has set a goal of 450 miles by the end of the year.
President Trump, who has long touted his own prosperity as a selling point, attacked Biden’s lifestyle, saying, “You have houses all over the place.”
Facts first: This is false.
While Biden has reported earning millions since leaving office, the former vice president doesn’t have houses “all over the place.” He owns two properties in Delaware.
Biden’s main home in Greenville, a suburb of Wilmington, was constructed on land he bought in 1996 for $350,000.
Biden bought a vacation home, also in Delaware, for $2.7 million in 2017 — after he finished his tenure as vice president and signed a lucrative book deal.
