Pence, Harris face off in VP debate with diverging views of America

ABC News Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl said both candidates showed their differences from Trump on the stage in terms of their demeanor, noting Pence started off by commending Harris for making history on the ticket. 

But Karl also said there were missed opportunities to press the candidates for follow-up questions when, at times, they skirted around giving direct answers.

"It was also somewhat maddening at times to see both of them avoid answering basic questions and not really seeing enough of a follow up, but especially Mike Pence," Karl said. "Mike Pence has an amazing ability not to answer a direct question, and you really have to press, and there was no real opportunity to do it here."

Harris dodged a question from Pence earlier on packing the Supreme Court, while Pence would not answer whether he believes in man-made climate change, among other questions.

PENCE'S CLAIM: "President Trump and I have a plan to improve health care and protect -- to protect preexisting conditions for every American."

FACT CHECK: Trump has promised throughout his first term in office to lay out a comprehensive health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But despite repeatedly claiming one would be coming in a few "weeks," the Trump administration has failed to produce one -- with less than a month to go until Election Day.

Trump is also currently suing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees coverage for preexisting conditions, and has still not proposed an alternative.

In June 2019, Trump told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that he would be releasing a "phenomenal" new health care plan within the next two months.

"If we win back the House, we're going to produce phenomenal health care. And we already have the concept of the plan, but it'll be less expensive than Obamacare by a lot," Trump said then.

Over a year later, the president still hasn't released a plan.

Trump also told Fox News' Chris Wallace over the summer that he would be releasing a health care plan in a matter of "weeks" -- but never did.

Meanwhile, as Trump and Republicans have repeatedly insisted on protecting preexisting conditions, the Trump administration is currently in court seeking to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees coverage for Americans with preexisting medical conditions. 

Trump did lay out health care goals at a campaign event in late September. But it was light on details and even Trump's own campaign called it his "vision" for health care, not a concrete plan.

--ABC News' Will Steakin

PENCE'S CLAIM: "(Trump) suspended all travel from China, the second-largest economy in the world. Now, senator, Joe Biden opposed that decision. He said it was xenophobic and hysterical."

FACT CHECK: While Pence has claimed that Biden opposed his decision to ban most travel from China at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic and that he called the restrictions "xenophobic," the former vice president did not explicitly weigh in on the decision when it was announced on Jan. 31. He did, however, call the president xenophobic minutes after the partial travel ban was announced.

During a campaign event that same day in Fort Madison, Iowa, Biden discussed the growing concern over the COVID-19 outbreak and cautioned that Trump should let science "lead the way."

"In moments like this, this is where the credibility of a president is most needed as he explains what we should and should not do," Biden told the crowd at the event. "This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysterical xenophobia ... and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science."

The comments came just minutes after the White House announcement, so it was unclear if Biden was referring to the decision specifically, but the former vice president did tweet a similar sentiment the next day.

"We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus," Biden posted. "We need to lead the way with science -- not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency."

Throughout March, Biden used the word "xenophobic" in various speeches and tweets to criticize the president's labeling COVID-19 the "China virus.

Biden did acknowledge in a March speech the travel restrictions put in place by the Trump administration, noting they "may" slow the spread. 

"Banning all travel from Europe or any other part of the world may slow it, but as we've seen, it will not stop it. And travel restrictions based on favoritism and politics rather than risk will be counterproductive," Biden said. 

Biden's campaign did not explicitly discuss the vice president's view of the ban until April.

"Joe Biden supports travel bans that are guided by medical experts, advocated by public health officials and backed by a full strategy," Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told CNN. "Science supported this ban, therefore he did too."

ABC News' Molly Nagle

PENCE'S CLAIM: Pence said that Trump's decision to impose travel restrictions from China, ultimately "bought" the U.S. "invaluable time" to save hundreds of thousands of American lives, reinvent testing capacity and deliver billions of supplies to doctors and nurses.

FACT CHECK: Although the U.S. has conducted more COVID-19 tests than any other country, according to experts, testing capacity is still not vast or fast enough to serve all the people who need to get a test.

Additionally, although billions of items of personal protective equipment, or PPE, have been delivered to frontline workers across the country, the United States continues to experience shortages of PPE and testing supplies, according to a Sept. 21 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In April, Trump said that the U.S. would be conducting up to 5 million tests per day, "very soon." However, the national 7-day average of coronavirus tests has yet to surpass 1 million, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

To date, the U.S. has conducted over 120 million COVID-19 tests, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
More testing will, of course, identify more cases.

However, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, there are several countries that have conducted more testing per capita than the U.S., but also have fewer cases per capita than the U.S. does -- such as the U.K., Spain and the United Arab Emirates. Those figures reflect all-time averages of daily tests conducted per capita -- and the daily percentage of tests that come back positive, which is known as the "positivity rate" or the "percent positive rate."

Despite having one of the highest rates of tests per capita, the U.S. faces the largest outbreak in the world and new cases continue to trend upward in many states. The percent positivity in the U.S. remains over 4.7%, when other countries with high testing figures report a significantly lower percent positivity rate, according to Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, the shortages of PPE and testing supplies are due to high global demand and the fact the domestic production of supplies is limited. According to the Government Accountability Office, "testing supply shortages have contributed to delays in turnaround times for testing results.

ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos

"Delays in processing test results have multiple serious consequences, including delays in isolating those who test positive and tracing their contacts in a timely manner, which can in turn exacerbate outbreaks by allowing the virus to spread undetected," the report read.

--ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos