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US presidential election: final debate between Trump and Biden kicks off

 

Hostilities are on. Donald Trump and Joe Biden kicked off Thursday night in Nashville, the hotspot of country music in Tennessee, in front of millions of viewers, their one final televised duel. The US president is the first to speak, questioned how he would manage the health crisis in the event of a second term. “I am immune,” insisted the Republican billionaire again, explaining that his government had prevented tens of thousands of additional deaths.

Their first debate, at the end of September in Cleveland, Ohio, had turned into a verbal fist. Leading in the polls, the 77-year-old Democrat had called the 45th President of the United States, 74, a “liar”, “racist” then “clown”. “There is nothing intelligent in you,” retorted the ex-businessman. To avoid the cacophony of the first confrontation, the microphone of each candidate is cut during the first two minutes of the other’s speaking for each question.

Biden wants to avoid a misstep

Unlike the previous presidential elections, there will have been only two debates this year, the outgoing president having refused a virtual duel on October 15, a format proposed to avoid the risk of infection after his positive diagnosis for the coronavirus. The teams of candidates announced a few hours before the face-to-face Thursday that they had tested negative for Covid-19, Donald Trump having complied with the exercise aboard the presidential plane Air Force One.

The Plexiglas walls that had been installed on the stage to separate the two septuagenarians were finally removed. Kyle Kondik, political analyst at the University of Virginia, believes that this tête-à-tête is for Donald Trump “one of the last opportunities to change the course of the race.” For Joe Biden, the objective is first of all to avoid any missteps “so as not to give ammunition to the Trump team”. The Republican has accentuated in recent days his personal attacks on the integrity of his opponent, hammering that the Biden family is a “criminal enterprise”. He has been repeating this accusation for several weeks, without concrete evidence to support it, and even called on the Minister of Justice to investigate.

47 million Americans have already voted

Faithful to his strategy, centered on an omnipresence on the ground, the American president participated Wednesday evening in a campaign meeting in North Carolina and will find Florida on Friday. For his part, Joe Biden has stayed at home in Delaware since the start of the week without any public event. After the debate, he will resume his campaign with a speech in his hometown of Wilmington on Friday and a trip to key state of Pennsylvania on Saturday.

In the meantime, it was former President Barack Obama who rose to the front lines Wednesday in Philadelphia to warn against polls which, in 2016, were favorable to Hillary Clinton before her surprise defeat. “A lot of people stayed at home, were lazy and complacent,” he said. ” Not this time ! Not in this election! “. Already more than 47 million Americans have voted by mail or in person, nearly 35% of the total turnout four years ago, according to independent organization Elections Project.

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