ASMA KHALID: Donald Trump and Joe Biden battled it out
in a second and final presidential debate on Thursday night.
It was a far more watchable, civil conversation
than their first meeting. President Trump
was more restrained and came with a mission to deliver a
couple of key messages. He tried to emphasize the economy and
tried to play up the fact that Biden is a career politician. The
two men were actually able to discuss policy in a format that
was digestible and comprehensible for viewers. Those policy debates
included conversations over immigration, racial justice,
health care, North Korea and, of course, the coronavirus. The
pandemic and the president's response to it has been a key
argument for the Biden campaign. And that's how the Democratic
presidential nominee began the night.
JOE BIDEN: 220,000 Americans dead.
If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is
responsible for not taking control — in fact not saying I'm,
I take no responsibility initially — anyone who's responsible for that
many deaths should not remain as president
of the United States of America.
KHALID: President Trump tried to emphasize that a vaccine would be
ready soon. And as he has been doing for months, he insisted the
cure for the pandemic should not be worse than the problem itself.
DONALD TRUMP: We're learning to live with it. We have no choice. We
can't lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. He has
the, he has the ability to lock himself up. I don't know. He's
obviously made a lot of money someplace, but he has this thing
about living in a basement. People can't do that. By the way,
I as the president couldn't do that. I'd love to put myself in
the basement or in a beautiful room in the White House and go
away for a year and a half until it disappears. I can't do that.
KHALID: Biden seized on that language, insisting the country was not
learning to live with the virus. He said people were learning to
die with it. And although Biden is the challenger in this race,
he has a long political record to defend, and that was something
that Donald Trump tried to highlight. He criticized Biden
for the 1994 crime bill and the Obama administration's record on
deportations. Biden has long run on the legacy of Barack Obama,
but on immigration, as on health care, he tried to draw some
distinctions. Still, this debate did not seem to have the tone or
the substance to dramatically alter the trajectory of the race.
Already, an estimated 49 million people have voted early.
Asma Khalid, NPR News.