US election 2020: Donald Trump, Joe Biden face microphone muting rule at final debate
Donald Trump and Joe Biden will face a surprise new rule at their final debate, as the US President claimed his Democratic opponent’s family was a “criminal enterprise” at a campaign rally.
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The last time they faced off it was a shambolic insult-filled shoutathon, so the organisers of this week’s final presidential debate have cracked down with some new rules.
President Donald Trump and Democrat contender Joe Biden will each be given just two minutes of uninterrupted talking time before their microphones are turned off at the second and final debate in Nashville.
The 90-minute debate will be in six 15-minute parts and each candidate will be granted an uninterrupted two minutes to answer.
The moderator will not cut into the back and forth part of the debate, but the commission said any interruptions would count against the candidate’s total time.
The commission said it “had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.”
When the pair met for the first and only other debate, they repeatedly cut off each other and moderator Chris Wallace.
‘CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE’: TRUMP SLAMS BIDEN’S FAMILY
Joe Biden has more “personal corruption” than “anybody in history” and his family is a “criminal enterprise”, Donald Trump has claimed at a campaign rally in Arizona.
Mr Trump claimed his Democratic rival had made a “corrupt bargain” in exchange for his party’s presidential nomination and had “handed control of his party to the communists, the Marxists and left-wing extremists”.
“And that’s before we get to his own personal corruption which is more than anybody in history,” Mr Trump said. “I say this, it’s the second biggest scandal politically in the history of our country. Number one was spying on my campaign and getting caught,” Mr Trump told crowds at Tucson International Airport.
The US President pointed to recent claims published by the New York Post that then-vice president Mr Biden, who was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine, took actions to help his son Hunter, who in 2014-2017 sat on the board of controversial Ukraine energy company Burisma.
“As far as I’m concerned the Biden family is a criminal enterprise,” Mr Trump said.
He added: “The Biden family used the vice presidency as a for-profit cash machine.
“Joe Biden has been lying to the American public to cover it up.”
The Biden campaign has rejected the assertions of corruption in the report, but has not denied the veracity of the underlying materials, mostly emails between Hunter Biden and business partners.
Earlier, Mr Trump accused Democrats of holding up a coronavirus vaccine for political purposes as the partisan stoush grew over navigating the pandemic.
Focusing heavily on the coronavirus during the first of two rallies being held on Monday (local time) in the key battleground state of Arizona, Mr Trump also criticised and mocked his infectious diseases chief Anthony Fauci.
In his third attack on Dr Fauci, whom he earlier called an “idiot”, Mr Trump mimicked an awkward baseball pitch that the 79-year-old had been filmed giving, drawing cheers and laughter from the large crowd gathered at an airport in Prescott, Arizona.
He said Democrat candidate Joe Biden was co-ordinating plans to “lock down” the country if he wins in a fortnight.
“You know Biden wants to lock it down, he wants to listen to Dr Fauci,” Mr Trump said.
“He has a bad arm, but he’s a good guy.
“Look, our people don’t like him. I like him.”
Responding to a pledge by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that he would not use a vaccine released by a Trump administration, he said the companies involved including Johnson and Johnson were “ready” to release their therapies but were waiting on approvals.
“They are willing to demean a vaccine for political purposes,” Mr Trump said of Democrats.
“It’s a shame when you try and demean something so important for politics.”
Mr Trump also gave an off-the-cuff assessment of the characters of his two most prominent children, daughter Ivanka and son Don Jr.
He said they would have been treated differently to how the Bidens are being treated over the foreign interference reports by the New York Post based on Mr Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop.
“If that were me they wouldn’t allow me to run,” he said, calling Mr Biden a “criminal”.
“Can you imagine if Don Junior had the problems of ‘where-is-Hunter’?
“Don Jnr, oh my poor boy. Oh, what that boy’s been through.
“I don’t know, Ivanaka is different. She sort of floats through life. She’s pretty amazing, I tell you.”
UP TO FIVE RALLIES A DAY: TRUMP’S PLEDGE
Earlier, Mr Trump pledged to hold as many as five rallies a day until the election in stark contrast to his opponent, who won’t even appear in public until the final debate this week.
“We are going to win. I wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago,” Mr Trump told campaign staff in a call on Monday local time.
The president also unleashed on his infectious diseases chief on the call, a day after Dr Anthony Fauci told US 60 Minutes he was “absolutely not” surprised Mr Trump had fallen ill with COVID because of his cavalier approach to social distancing.
Continuing to ramp up his anti-science language in his bid to restart America’s economy from state-mandated lockdowns, Mr Trump labelled Dr Fauci and other experts as “idiots”.
“People are tired of COVID,” Mr Trump said, in his most strident reported comments about Dr Fauci.
“People are tired of hearing [about] Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.
“Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. This guy’s a disaster.
“If I listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths.”
Mr Trump’s criticism of Dr Fauci was slammed by Team Biden.
Dr.Tony Fauci says we don’t allow him to do television, and yet I saw him last night on @60Minutes, and he seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late, great, Bob Hope. All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions. He said “no masks & let China inâ€. Also, Bad arm!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
...P.S. Tony should stop wearing the Washington Nationals’ Mask for two reasons. Number one, it is not up to the high standards that he should be exposing. Number two, it keeps reminding me that Tony threw out perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of Baseball!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
“President Trump’s refusal to listen to scientists and his self-defeating denial has left the United States the hardest hit country in the world from coronavirus,” the campaign said in a statement.
“Now, eight months into the pandemic — with nearly 220,000 American lives lost, more than 8 million infected, and millions out of work — Trump’s closing message in the final days of the 2020 race is to publicly mock Joe Biden for trusting science and to call Dr Fauci, the leading public health official on COVID-19, a “disaster” and other public health officials “idiots.””
It came as Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s campaign announced he was calling “a lid” for four days until after the final presidential debate in Nashville, on Thursday night, local time.
The former vice president was said to be preparing for his final face-off against Mr Trump, three weeks after the pair first sparred in a disastrous debate, after it was reported he had no public events for the next four days.
But it also conveniently shields Mr Biden from taking questions about the growing scandal engulfing his son, Hunter Biden, whose dodgy deals with foreign entities were exposed by the New York Post after a laptop containing damning emails was handed to the paper.
And there were concerns Mr Biden would also be shielded from questions about his son at the debate, after the Election Commission, which Republicans accuse of being partisan, struck foreign affairs from the list of topics that would be covered.
Our letter to the BDC (Biden Debate Commission) pic.twitter.com/ZsY5JfMbT7
— BillStepien (@BillStepien) October 19, 2020
“ARE YOU FRICKEN KIDDING ME???,” tweeted Donald Trump Jnr.
“Given the corruption we have see (sic), it should be the only topic of discussion so we can finally get an answer from Joe Biden!”
TRUMP MAKES PROMISE TO SUPPORTERS
Declaring he would defy the polls predicting a Joe Biden victory, Donald Trump said he had been greeted with historic enthusiasm on a marathon weekend campaigning.
“Sixteen days from now, we’re gonna win four more years in the White House,” Mr Trump said to hundreds gathered at an airport in Carson City, Nevada, on Sunday (local time).
“We’re gonna keep it going, we can have a big red wave.
“I don’t think it’s ever been done before and the enthusiasm that we have.”
Earlier, hundreds of adoring fans surged at his motorcade south of LA, leaving Secret Service officers screaming at supporters to get back from the speeding procession escorting Mr Trump.
Thousands had lined a 3km section of road in Newport as the President travelled from the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana to a Republican fundraiser in the well-to-do bayside community about 20 minutes north.
In what one supporter described as the “Donald Trump rock festival”, people wore American-flag themed outfits and waved pro-Trump flags as they waited excitedly to get a glimpse of the President.
The favourable sentiment supported new polls showing a rise in support for Mr Trump as rival Joe Biden appears to be sliding.
Police battled to keep the six-deep crowds off the road at the motorcade’s final stretch ahead of a fundraiser hosted by tech billionaire Palmer Lucky.
As the motorcade, led by about 20 high-speed motorcycle cops, turned off the highway into Via Lido, the police line could no longer contain the fans who rushed from the sidewalk towards the procession with many people perilously close to the speeding line of vehicles.
In wild scenes, startled Secret Service agents could be seen yelling from car windows to people – including families with small children – telling them to get back.
There were no barriers used to contain the crowd.
“Four more years! Four more years!” Trump supporters, to which a small number of Biden fans responded, “Two more weeks! Two more weeks!”
There was open antagonism between the two groups, with Biden supporters screaming at “Trumpers” to “Put on a mask!”
“This is a Trump rock festival!” one man screamed as the crowd erupted into chants.
The scene resembled a concert as smiling supporters wandered through the streets afterwards and a long line of Trump flag-adorned vehicles stretched north along the coast towards LA under stunning blue skies.
Invitations for the fundraiser featured tickets ranging in price from $A400 to $A200,000 to get a photo taken with Mr Trump.
The event had been delayed from earlier in October when the President was diagnosed with COVID-19.
Later, at a MAGA rally in Nevada, he warned a Biden victory would destroy America’s reeling economy.
“This election is a choice between a Trump super-recovery, which we are in right now, and a Biden depression,” he said.
“You will have a depression right now if your taxes are going to be quadrupled, you will have a depression the likes of which we have not seen since 1929.”
With polls closing in just over a fortnight, Mr Trump encouraged his supporters to take advantage of early voting, which a record 22 million Americans have already done.
BIDEN CRISIS DEEPENS
Lawyers for Hunter Biden tried to retrieve a laptop from a computer shop owner at the centre of a growing scandal that is hurting his father Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency, according to former White House strategist Steve Bannon.
Bannon, who is currently on bail over fraud charges related to border wall fundraising, told The Australian that “numerous attempts” had been made by attorneys for the Bidens to get the laptop.
The New York Post last week published emails, images and text messages contained in a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden, who has been paid millions of dollars by foreign companies despite his apparent lack of qualifications.
They detailed Biden Jnr’s dealings including some with links to the Chinese Communist Party and how had traded access to his father when he was Barack Obama’s Vice President.
Further emails obtained by Fox News intimated that Biden Snr had financially profited from the arrangements.
The Bidens have not denied the providence of the laptop or its contents, but many US media outlets are treating the story with caution and a decision by social media giants Facebook and Twitter to censor it sparked a firestorm of controversy.
Bannon, who was involved in getting the laptop to the New York Post, told The Australian that Biden’s lawyers wanted the laptop back.
“His lawyer, Mesires (George Mesires) from Chicago, one of the top lawyers in the country, emailed us. He called the repair shop, he sent us an email, he sent the repair shop an email saying Hunter dropped these off, he forgot to pick them up. That’s an email,” Mr Bannon said.
“In addition, we haven’t released this, Hunter Biden’s lawyer has come to us both with phone calls and with emails saying I’ve got to get the hard-drive back. This is not some Russian intelligence operation, they’ve admitted it’s their hard-drive.
“It was the night before we came out with the first story, I think, because the NY Post went to them for comment … they panicked. One lawyer started calling around and sent the emails.”
BIDEN’S POPULARITY DROPS
Revelations about his son’s dodgy business deals when he was vice president appear to have put a dent in Mr Biden’s lead over Mr Trump in new polling.
With just over two weeks until election day, Mr Biden dropped two points as Mr Trump increased a point over the past week, according to a national tracking poll released yesterday by IBD/TIPP.
While Mr Biden was still ahead 7.1 points, the poll also looked at the phenomenon of “secret Trump voters” – which some pundits believe was a key demographic in 2016 that included people worried they would be publicly shamed for voting for the reality TV star turned politician.
Almost half (47 per cent) of respondents believed they were surrounded by Trump voters, while just over a third said they believed their neighbours would vote Democrat.
At the second of two rallies Mr Trump held in the key battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin yesterday, Mr Trump gave a nod to these Americans.
“It’s going to be a wave, it’s gonna be a wave like nobody has ever seen,” Mr Trump said.
Responding to record early voting, which is at record levels this year due to coronavirus concerns, Mr Trump said internal polling put him in a strong position.
“In Michigan a strange thing has happened. We are leading substantially in early voting,” he said to cheers.
“What’s that all about?”
“Something’s happening out there. Take a look at this crowd! You can see it as far as the eye can see … We win Wisconsin we win the whole ballgame.
“I mean what the hell do you think I’m doing here on a freezing night with 45 degree (7.2 degrees Celsius) winds? Do you think I’m doing this for my health? I’m not doing this for my health.”
Mr Trump continued his action packed campaign schedule as Mr Biden called an early lid and lay low in Delaware.
Earlier, tens of thousands marched in cities across the country for a Women’s March.
Mr Trump described the reaction to the marches as hypocritical, saying the COVID risks were not being portrayed whereas at his rallies they were.
“Let’s call all our rallies peaceful protests,” Mr Trump said in Michigan to cheers.
“If we call this a rally we’d have a problem, so we call this a peaceful protest.”
He also continued his attacks on Mr Biden amid a series of exposes from three different media outlets that depicted his son Hunter trading on his father’s name to make millions from foreign entities in Russia, China and Ukraine while he was Barack Obama’s VP.
“He’s a national security risk,” Mr Trump said of Mr Biden.
Earlier, the New York Post published a raw series of text messages showing Mr Biden offering fatherly comfort as his son, Hunter, lamented from a rehab facility about being a “f – ked up addict who can’t be trusted” and who had damaged his dad’s political career.
The intimate family exchange took place on February 24, 2019, two months before Joe Biden launched his campaign for the White House.
“Good morning my beautiful son. I miss you and love you. Dad,” the elder Biden wrote.
- with AFP