On the night the second presidential debate was scheduled, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden took questions from voters in a town hall setting – only, they were in different cities and appeared on different networks.
Biden sat down in Philadelphia with ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos, while Trump spoke to Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie. Trump backed out of plans for the presidential faceoff originally scheduled for the evening after debate organizers said it would be held virtually following Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis.
It was Trump's positive diagnosis that created Thursday’s odd spectacle, which deprived most viewers of a simultaneous look at the candidates just 19 days before Election Day. The moment seemed fitting for a race unlike any other, as yet another campaign ritual was changed by the pandemic that has rewritten the norms of society.
The town halls offered a different format for the two candidates to present themselves to voters, after the pair held a chaotic and combative first debate late last month. The difference in the men’s tones was immediate and striking.
Trump, less than two weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19, dodged directly answering whether he took a test the day of the Sept. 29 debate, only saying “possibly I did, possibly I didn’t.” Debate rules required that each candidate, using the honor system, had tested negative prior to the Cleveland event, but Trump spoke in circles when asked when he last tested negative.
Biden denounced the White House’s handling of the virus that has claimed more than 215,000 American lives, declaring that it was at fault for closing a pandemic response office established by the Obama administration.
The two men are still scheduled to occupy the same space for a debate for a second and final time next week in Nashville.
Here's what the two candidates said about key topics:
Biden said he is willing to take a position before Election Day on the idea of expanding the Supreme Court “depending on how” Republicans handle Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination.
The former vice president has refused to answer the question of court packing directly, calling it a distraction from Republicans’ rush to confirm Barrett before Election Day.
Biden repeated Thursday that he’s “not a fan” of the practice, but he also said he believes Republicans are violating the spirit of the Constitution with a confirmation process while people are already voting in the presidential election.
Meanwhile, Trump said he didn’t ask Barrett whether she’d rule in his favor should the Supreme Court have to decide the 2020 election: “It would be totally up to her.”
The president acknowledged he changed his standard for court appointments this year. In 2016, he argued that then-President Barack Obama should not be able to fill an empty seat eight months before the election. This year, he is pushing Barrett through less than three weeks before Election Day, following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month.
Trump said the reason was Democratic opposition to his last nominee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual harassment in his 2018 confirmation. “The whole ballgame changed when I saw the way they treated Judge Kavanaugh,” Trump said. “I have never seen a human being treated so badly.”
Trump also demurred when asked whether he supports overturning Roe v. Wade, saying “I don’t want to do anything to influence anything right now.”
He said he worries that discussing his viewpoint could be seen as “trying to give her a signal” on how to rule, adding "I want her to go by the law, and I know she’s going to make a great decision for our country.”
Of Barrett, Biden said that "I don't even think she has laid out much of a judicial philosophy, in terms of the bases upon which she thinks are there unenumerated rights in the Constitution."
He added that the hearings should not have taken place so close to the presidential election, specifically mentioning that "millions of people have already voted to put someone on the court."
Trump sidestepped questions about whether or not he took coronavirus test the day of the first presidential debate.
“I don’t know, I don’t even remember,” he said. “I test all the time. I can tell you this."
Meanwhile, Biden declined to say definitively whether or not he would make a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory: “It depends on the state of the nature of the vaccine when it comes out, and how it's being distributed.”
Stephanopoulos asked Biden how he could contain the pandemic without "crushing the economy."
"You can contain the pandemic by being rational,” Biden said, detailing his plan to reopen businesses and schools and provide proper funding to help them reopen safely.
Biden also said that he would "go to every mayor, I’d go to every councilman, I’d go to every local official and say, ‘mandate the mask,'" when asked about how he would enforce a mask mandate.
“The words of a president matter,” Biden said.
"When the president doesn’t wear a mask and makes fun of folks like me when I’m wearing a mask for a long time, people say it must not be that important,” he added
Cedric Humphrey, a Black student, said that young Black voters are torn over whom to vote for, with some conflicted between voting for Trump or not voting at all.
"So my question for you then is, besides 'you ain't black,' what do you have to say to young black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continually fails to protect them," he asked Biden.
Biden, in a long and winding answer, touched on the criminal justice system, suggesting it needed to be made “fair” and “more decent” before moving on to an assortment of economic and educational policies, adding that Black Americans need to be given tools to help generate wealth, including increased loans for Black-owned businesses and homeowners.
Biden also said that he believed that the 1994 crime bill was a mistake.
"Things have changed drastically," he said. "That crime bill, when we voted, the black caucus voted for it, every black mayor supported it across the board."
Biden added that the mistake was made at the state level: "The mistake came in terms of what the states did locally. What we did federally, we said ... it was all about the same time for the same crime."
The former vice president said America also needs to increase its funding for schools with lower-income families and suggesting adding more school psychologists in schools. He also proposed adding $70 billion to historically Black colleges and universities.
President Trump, on the other hand, did not give a direct answer to a woman who identified herself as the mother of a Black son who asked him to describe his plan to protect Black and Latino males from police brutality.
Trump fell back on his oft-repeated claim that he’s done more for the African American community than any president except Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
He talked about criminal justice reform legislation he signed into law, opportunity zones, funding for historically Black colleges and universities.
Trump has made it clear in the past that he stands with the police, often saying that the majority of police are good people whose profession is tarnished by a few “bad apples.”
One of the more memorable moments at Trump's town hall came during an exchange where Guthrie pressed the president on his retweets of a conspiracy theory centered around the death of Osama bin Laden.
"That was a retweet, I'll put it out there. People can decide for themselves," Trump said, defending his retweets as just sharing information.
Guthrie replied, "I don't get that. You're the president. You're not, like, someone's crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever."
Trump used the opportunity to attack news media: "I do a lot of retweets, and, frankly, because the media is so fake and so corrupt, if I didn't have social media ... I wouldn't be able to get the word out."
"Well, the word is false," Guthrie interjected.
Guthrie also took Trump to task about Trump's false characterization of a CDC study on masks:
"Just the other day they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it so ... that’s what I heard and that’s what I saw," he said. Guthrie noted that he falsely characterized the study; in a fact check, the Associated Press said Trump is "botching the study’s findings, repeatedly."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.