Trump, Biden clash in final debate on COVID-19 response, health care, race

Highlights from the final presidential debate before Election Day.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, faced off in the final presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle from Belmont University in Nashville on Thursday night, marking the candidates’ last chance to pitch themselves to tens of millions of voters in primetime before Nov. 3.

The stakes were high: Trump needed to make his case as polls show him trailing nationally and in several battleground states key to his reelection hopes. At the same time, Biden had a platform to solidify his lead and avoid any major mistakes with Election Day just 12 days away.

Biden spent the week hunkered down in Wilmington, Delaware, to prepare -- what he's done before other debates -- while Trump had seemingly done less to prepare, telling reporters on Wednesday, "I do prep, I do prep," without elaborating. Earlier this week Trump said that answering journalists' questions is the best kind of preparation.

Thursday's debate was supposed to be the candidates' third matchup but is instead the second of only two presidential debates this election. Trump refused to participate in the second debate when it was moved to a virtual format following his COVID-19 diagnosis. The candidates ultimately participated in dueling town halls instead.


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Fact check: Trump misleads on fundraising

TRUMP'S CLAIM: “Joe, you have raised a lot of money, tremendous amounts of money and every time you raise money, deals are made, Joe. I could raise so much more money as president and as somebody that knows most of those people. I could call the heads of Wall Street, the heads of every company in America. I would blow away every record, but I don't want to do that because it puts me in a bad position.”

FACT CHECK: Trump targeted Biden for raising money for his campaign by claiming he could raise more but would be put in a “bad position” because he would owe donors something in return.

However, Trump himself regularly holds private, high-dollar fundraisers raking in millions of dollars and has raised over $1.5 billion so far this election cycle.

Just a week ago, the president attended a closed-door fundraiser at the home of Nicole and Palmer Luckey, an entrepreneur -- where tickets ranged from $2,800 up to $100,000 per person.

-ABC News' Will Steakin


Trump, Biden take last question of the debate on leadership

The last question of the night was on leadership and what Trump and Biden would say to the people who didn't vote for them on Inauguration Day.

Trump said that we would have to make the country "totally successful," and touted low unemployment numbers among all Americans before the pandemic.

"Success is going to bring us together. We are on the road to success," the president said. "But I'm cutting taxes, and he wants to raise everybody's taxes, and he wants to put new regulations on everything. He will kill it. If he gets in, you will have a depression the likes of which you've never seen. Your 401(k)'s will go to hell, and it'll be a very, very sad day for this country."


Biden started his answer by saying that as an American president he would represent all Americans. 
"Whether you voted for me or against me, and I'm going to make sure you're represented. I'm going to give you hope," he said.

"We're going to move," Biden added. "We're going to choose science over fiction. We're going to choose hope over fear. We're going to choose to move forward, because we have enormous opportunities -- enormous opportunities to make things better."


Fact check: Trump says he was told by DNI that both Iran and Russia want him to lose the election

TRUMP'S CLAIM: "Through John, who is -- John Ratcliffe, who is fantastic, DNI. He said the one thing that's common to both of them (Russia and Iran), they both want you to lose because there has been nobody tougher to Russia with -- between the sanctions. Nobody tougher than me on Russia."

FACT CHECK: While it is unclear whether Trump's director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, told him personally that Russia hopes he would lose the upcoming election, such a statement would contradict what the U.S. intelligence committee has determined.

In August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed "that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia 'establishment.'” The office has never stated publicly that Russia hopes Biden will lose the upcoming election.

As for Iran, the office said it determined the country in its interference efforts "seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, Trump, and to divide the country in advance of the 2020 elections."

Ratcliffe in a Wednesday evening news conference revealed both Iran and Russia recently obtained voter registration data in their efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, and that Iran was separately behind "a series of threatening emails that were found to be sent this week to Democratic voters," which he said was "designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump."

But Democratic leaders have argued Ratcliffe may have inflated Iran's motivations relating to Trump and instead the country was seeking more broadly to sow chaos in the U.S. democratic process.

U.S. officials have also characterized to ABC News that Russia’s interference efforts both in 2016 and 2020 far exceed that of Iran’s in both scope and complexity.

-ABC News' Alexander Mallin


Trump vs. Biden on the issues: Climate change and the environment

Climate change -- a hot-button topic for years -- has taken on renewed significance ahead of the 2020 presidential election, with wildfires decimating the West, tropical storms pounding the Gulf Coast and year after year of record temperatures.

Both Trump and Biden largely toe their respective party lines when it comes to issues pertaining to environmental policy.

Throughout his presidency, Trump reversed many American commitments to mitigating climate change, most notably pulling out of the Paris Agreement, removing clean water protections and seeking to fast track environmental reviews of dozens of major energy and infrastructure projects, such as drilling, fuel pipelines and wind farms.

Biden has countered the Trump administration's policies by promising to protect the environment with a proposed a $5 trillion plan.

Here is where each candidate stands on the issues


Fact check: Trump misstates Fauci's past comments on masks

TRUMP'S CLAIM: "Nobody knew where it was coming from, what it was. We've learned a lot. But Anthony said don't wear masks. Now he wants to wear masks."

FACT CHECK: Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top infectious disease experts in the country, and other public health experts initially told Americans not to wear surgical or N95 masks in the early days of what has become the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, as well as Fauci and other top experts, initially discouraged wearing masks because of concerns that masks and other personal protective equipment were in short supply for health care workers who needed them. Public health officials were also concerned wearing masks could have unintended consequences if people touched their face more often to adjust them or fail to keep social distancing.

"There was this feeling that there would be a shortage just for those who really need them very early on," Fauci said in a recent interview. "That was the big deal. We didn't have enough PPE including masks. Then it became clear that cloth masks worked reasonably well. And therefore there was no more shortage. Then the different analyses, meta analyses and others came in that in fact, it does work."

In early April, the CDC changed its recommendation about face coverings for the general public, based on evidence that a significant number of people who were asymptomatic or not yet feeling sick were transmitting the virus.

Duke University researchers have also concluded that "if 95 percent of people wear cloth masks when within 6 feet of other people in public, it will reduce COVID-19 transmission by at least 30 percent."

Trump also said he thought Fauci was a Democrat, but Fauci is not registered as a member of any political party, according to D.C. voting records.

-ABC News' Stephanie Ebbs and Arielle Mitropoulos