Trump and Biden will appear at separate events. Photo / AP
Trump and Biden will appear at separate events. Photo / AP
President Trump and Joe Biden will appear at separate, nationally televised events, with the president facing one of his final prime-time opportunities to change the race's trajectory.
President Donald Trump and Joe Biden will appear Thursday at separate, nationally televised town hall events starting at 8pm Eastern (1pm Friday NZtime).
Trump will be taking questions from voters in Miami. NBC, MSNBC and CNBC will broadcast the town hall, which will be moderated by Today show host Savannah Guthrie. It is expected to last for about an hour.
ABC will carry the Biden town hall, to be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and moderated by ABC News' chief anchor, George Stephanopoulos. The event is expected to last 90 minutes.
Trump and Biden were originally scheduled to hold a debate but it was cancelled after the president bowed out because it was set to be held virtually.
Trump is behind, polls show. Will he start looking for a new target to blame?
A federal judge in Pennsylvania last week threw out a lawsuit by the Trump campaign that sought to limit how mail-in ballots can be collected and counted. Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday said they were limiting the distribution of, or simply blocking, a report in The New York Post that made unverified claims about Biden. The stimulus bill that Trump is pushing for is at odds with both parties on Capitol Hill.
With less than three weeks to go, Trump has a host of targets he can point to as he looks to explain why things aren't going his way. Where he focuses his anger will also provide a preview of how he may react to the results on election night, if he loses.
Will Trump, once again, deliver Biden a gift by shouting?
The candidates won't be sharing a stage, but their competing town halls could set up a similar dynamic to the first general election debate this month.
With a substantial lead in national and battleground state polls, Biden is just hoping to run out the clock without any outside events changing the trajectory of the race. Trump, who has packed his schedule with as many rallies as it can fit, is seeking to drown him out with noise.
Will Trump try to overshadow Biden with his outbursts and attacks, which have exhausted even some of his own supporters?
Trump has stepped up his attacks on Biden in recent days. Photo / AP
Will Trump try to steer the conversation to Hunter Biden?
The day before the town hall events, Republicans seized on the report in The New York Post about Biden and his son Hunter, which was so unsubstantiated that Twitter and Facebook took the extraordinary step of limiting access to it on their platforms.
The report, pushed by Republican allies of Trump, involved Hunter Biden's work with a Ukraine energy company and whether he had sought his father's help — the source of an ongoing baseless smear by the president against the Bidens. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president, but Trump has been intent on creating distractions to keep voters from focusing on his failures in handling the coronavirus.
Despite the many questions surrounding the report — and the president's own history of influence-peddling while in office — Trump appears to sense a political opportunity, attacking Biden over the report at a rally Wednesday in Iowa.
If he ignores voters' questions at the town hall and steers the conversation back to smears, Trump risks inviting a political backlash among undecided voters for whom Hunter Biden is not a concern at a time of national crisis. And it would raise the question of whether Trump is being even more blatant in using information of dubious origins to improve his election chances than he was four years ago when he publicly called on Russia to find emails from Hillary Clinton's server.
Biden is ahead. Will he make any unforced errors?
Time is running short for Trump to change the race's direction. So Biden has a major imperative at his town hall: Don't commit unforced errors.
For months, Trump has made unfounded claims about Biden's stamina and mental acuity, and the Trump campaign has been eager to seize on Biden's verbal missteps. Trump's repeated warnings about Biden's fitness had the effect of lowering expectations for the former vice president in the first debate.
Biden arguably cleared the bar simply by remaining upright and cogent for the duration of the matchup, but Trump is continuing to push the message that his rival has declined. At his rally Wednesday, he said Biden was "shot" and had "lost it."
Biden thrives in one-on-one interactions with voters, so the town hall presents a better format for him than a traditional debate. But Trump and his allies are certain to latch on to any notable misstep by the Democratic nominee, particularly any moment that can be used as evidence that Biden has lost a step.
Biden has run a campaign focused on avoiding unforced errors. Photo / AP
Many voters detest Trump, but can Biden make an affirmative case for himself?
So much of the 2020 campaign has revolved around Trump, and many people are highly motivated to vote in November's election out of a burning desire to deny him a second term.
But whether they will be excited about Biden, too, is another question.
In the first debate, Trump's relentless interruptions did not make for an ideal setting for Biden to articulate his own vision for the country.
The town hall will give him another opportunity to make an affirmative case for a Biden presidency. It is also another chance to appeal to voters who may dislike Trump but were not initially drawn to Biden's candidacy, including many young voters who favoured other Democrats in the primary race.
Biden is not lacking in subjects to talk about at the town hall. He has laid out a far-reaching and ambitious policy agenda, with plans to expand health coverage, combat climate change, shrink the racial wealth gap and revive the economy after the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic. But whether he succeeds at pitching those plans at the town hall in a concise and compelling fashion remains to be seen.
Will Biden get tripped up by any policy issues?
Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, have had to navigate a series of tricky policy issues as they try to appeal to both progressives and more moderate voters.
One example is the future of the Supreme Court. Amid calls by some Democrats to add seats to the court as a countermeasure if the Senate confirms Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Biden has repeatedly faced questions about whether he supports expanding the court.
Over and over, Biden declined to offer a position, saying it would be a distraction. But he said in a local television interview Monday that he was "not a fan of court packing." That answer is not likely to put an end to questions to him on that subject.
Other politically delicate subjects include issues like taxes, the Green New Deal and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Trump has tried to portray Biden as a tool of the Democratic Party's far left, despite the former vice president's reputation as a moderate. Biden has faced the task of keeping his party united while also maintaining distance from certain proposals that could be used to paint him as far to the left.
