Trump and Biden face tough questions in simultaneous town halls

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden were both forced to answer tough questions Thursday night during dueling town halls, as Trump vied for an elusive campaign reset while trying to defend his response to the coronavirus pandemic, his embrace of conspiracy theories and his stance on White supremacists under tough questioning from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.

At the same time, Biden was repeatedly pressed to clarify his position on whether he will support adding members to the Supreme Court, his work on the 1986 and 1994 crime bills and his positions on fracking and the Green New Deal. He was also forced to explain his controversial comment that if Black Americans don’t support him “you ain’t Black.”

In one of the most news-making moments of the night, the President admitted that he may not have taken a coronavirus test on the day of his debate with Biden, even though he was required to do so by the Commission on Presidential Debates and tested positive for Covid-19 two days later.

He refused to say when his last negative test was before the debate and did not express any regret for the Rose Garden event that is now widely viewed as a “super-spreader” event, where attendees were not socially distanced and did not wear masks.

When asked about the New York Times reports that he has debts of approximately $421 million dollars — loans that he has personally guaranteed and that will come due in the next four years — Trump nodded but then insisted that the newspaper’s numbers are “all wrong.” He told Guthrie that he does not owe money to Russia. But when Guthrie asked whether he owes anything to foreign banks, Trump replied: “Not that I know of.”

“I don’t owe money to any of these sinister people,” Trump said, adding that he is “very under-leveraged,” at one point saying: “$400 million is a peanut.”

Meanwhile, in an incredible split-screen moment a less than three weeks out from Election Day, Biden was taking questions from voters on ABC and excoriated the President’s response to the pandemic.

“He didn’t talk about what needed to be done because he kept worrying, in my view, about the stock market,” Biden said of Trump. “He worried if he talked about how bad this could be, unless we took these precautionary actions, then, in fact, the market would go down. And his barometer of success of the economy is the market.”

Biden attempted to clear up his position on “court packing” — the term for adding justices to the Supreme Court in order to get more sympathetic rulings — after weeks of trying to evade the question.

At the beginning of his answer, Biden reiterated once again that he is “not a fan” of court packing but said that his position will depend on how the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is “handled.” Asked what that means, Biden said it would be contingent on if there was a “real” debate on the Senate floor. “I’m open considering what happens from that point on,” he said.

Pressed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if voters have a right to know about his position, he said, “They do have a right to know where I stand. They have a right to know where I stand before they vote.”

“So you’ll come out with a clear position before Election Day?” Stephanopoulos asked.

Biden replied, “Yes. Depending on how they handle this.”

The plans for the two men to meet face-to-face at a town hall where they would take questions from voters evaporated after Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, amid fears that he could have exposed Biden and others to the virus during the chaotic first debate. The Commission on Presidential Debates proposed a virtual debate, but Trump refused — leading Biden to make his own plans with ABC for a solo town hall. Trump’s campaign then arranged for the President to do his own town hall with NBC during the same hour.

That means the tiny sliver of Americans who have still not made up their minds in this sharply polarized election were forced to flip back and forth between the two network events, with Trump in Miami and Biden in Philadelphia. Though the election is still more than two weeks away, more than 17 million ballots have already been cast in 44 states and the District of Columbia, signs of what could be historic turnout this year. (CNN)