Trump and Biden clash in final debate
Tensions were extremely high in the final US presidential debate. President Donald Trump and his democratic rival were heated at several times during the exchange, disagreeing on key points as the race for the White House nears its conclusion.
The pair rarely see eye-to-eye and in recent months have clashed over a variety of controversial topics, including Coronavirus, foreign interference and the Black Lives Matter movement and the mutual animosity has been on public display. It all seemed to stem from the fact Biden believes Trump has ‘failed to achieve much’ whilst in office.
In previous debates, both Trump and Biden have snapped at each other and talked over each other leading to the moderator of the debate, Kristen Welker muting the microphone of the non-speaking candidate and keeping them both within the speaking period, leading to her receiving high praise on social media.
Biden believes Trump has not done enough to combat race relations and racism to which he replied that he was “the least racist person in the room.” He also hit back at him, calling him “all take and no action,” stating that he had 4 years during his term as Vice President to help control the issue but had failed to do so.
According to a local poll, most Americans disapprove of how President Trump has handled Coronavirus. Several key members of the White House team have tested positive for the virus in recent weeks, including Trump himself, leading people to question if he had taken precautions seriously after downplaying its seriousness for so long.
Biden stated, “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain president of the United States of America” on the topic of COVID-19 as he attacked Trump’s handling of the pandemic, whilst Trump responded by saying: “We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away……we can’t close up our nation or we won’t have one”.
An unprecedented 57 million votes have already been cast through early voting as the public prepare for election night on November 8th, already 40% the number of total votes that were counted in the 2016 general election. This is on course to be one of the highest voter turnouts in US election history, according to the predicted turnout.
Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points in the latest national poll, conducted on October 22nd. That lead has gotten slightly smaller over the last few weeks, but Biden is still projected to take the victory. As proved in 2016, anything can happen in politics as Trump snatched the presidency after being behind then democratic rival Hillary Clinton during much of their campaigning.