“I will participate but it’s very unfair that they changed the topics and it’s very unfair that again we have an anchor who’s totally biased,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from rallies in Arizona
The final debate between US President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden will feature a mute button to allow each candidate to speak uninterrupted, organisers said on Monday, looking to avoid the disruptions that marred the first matchup.
The Trump campaign voiced objections to the change — made
after the president repeatedly talked over both Biden and the moderator at last
month’s debate in violation of its agreed-upon rules — but said the Republican
would still take part in the Thursday night event, one of his last chances to
reach a large prime-time audience before voting ends on November 3.
The Presidential Commission on Debates said each candidate’s
microphone at the debate in Nashville, Tennessee, would be silenced to allow
the other to make two minutes of opening remarks at the beginning of each
15-minute segment of the debate. Both microphones will be turned on to allow a
back-and-forth after that time.
“President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favoured candidate,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
More than 30 million Americans have already cast their
ballots, limiting Trump’s chances of reframing a contest that national and
state opinion polls show him trailing.
Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden during a chaotic and
ill-tempered debate on Sept 29, at one point provoking Biden to snap: “Will you
shut up, man?”
Earlier on Monday, Trump’s campaign said it was unhappy with
the announced set of topics for Thursday’s debate, arguing that it should focus
more on foreign policy and asserting that the nonpartisan group was tilted
toward Biden.
“I will participate but it’s very unfair that they changed
the topics and it’s very unfair that again we have an anchor who’s totally
biased,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington
from rallies in Arizona.
Kristen Welker of NBC News, a respected White House reporter,
is slated to anchor the debate.
Trump attacks Dr
Fauci, press and polls
On the third day of a western campaign swing, Trump was
facing intense pressure to turn around his campaign, hoping for the type of
last-minute surge that gave him a come-from-behind victory four years ago. But
his inconsistent message, another rise in virus cases and his attacks on
experts like Dr Anthony Fauci could undermine his final efforts to appeal to
voters outside his most loyal base.
“I’m not running scared,” Trump told reporters before taking
off for Tucson, Arizona, for his fifth rally in three days. “I think I’m
running angry. I’m running happy and I’m running very content ’cause I’ve done
a great job.”
His aggressive travel comes as Trump plays defence in states
he won four years ago, though the president insisted he was confident as he
executed a packed schedule despite the pandemic.
“We’re going to win,” he told campaign staff on a morning
conference call from Las Vegas. He went on to acknowledge that he “wouldn’t
have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago”, referring to the days when he
was hospitalised with Covid-19. But he said he felt better now than at any
point in 2016. “We’re in the best shape we’ve ever been,” he said.
Seeking to shore up the morale of his staff amid growing
private concerns that he is running out of time to make up lost ground, Trump
blasted his government’s own scientific experts as too negative, even as his
handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans remains a
central issue to voters.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said of the government’s top infectious disease expert. “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci’s a disaster.”
At a rally in Prescott, Arizona, Trump assailed Biden for
pledging to heed the advice of scientific experts, saying dismissively that his
rival “wants to listen to Dr Fauci.”
The doctor is both respected and popular, and Trump’s
rejection of scientific advice on the pandemic has already drawn bipartisan
condemnation.
At his rally, Trump also ramped up his attacks on the news
media, singling out NBC’s Kristen Welker, the moderator of the next
presidential debate, as well as CNN for aggressively covering a pandemic that
is now infecting tens of thousands of Americans every day.
Fauci, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on
Sunday, said he was not surprised that Trump contracted the virus after he held
a series of large events with few face coverings.
“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him
in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people,
and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said of the president.
Biden was off the campaign trail on Monday, but his campaign
praised Fauci and criticised Trump for “reckless and negligent leadership” that
“threatens to put more lives at risk”.
“Trump’s closing message in the final days of the 2020 race
is to publicly mock Joe Biden for trusting science and to call Dr Fauci, the
leading public health official on Covid-19, a ‘disaster’ and other public
health officials ‘idiots’,” the campaign said.
COURTESY DAWN NEWS!
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