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.
Top headlines:
Fact Check: Trump overstates vaccine readiness timeline
TRUMP'S CLAIM: "We have a vaccine that's coming. It's ready. It's going to be announced within weeks. And it's going to be delivered." ... "Johnson & Johnson is doing very well. Moderna is doing very well. Pfizer is doing very well. And we have numerous others."
FACT CHECK: A COVID-19 vaccine isn't ready right now. But it is true that two companies -- Pfizer and Moderna -- could seek emergency use authorization in November or December.
Like Pfizer and Moderna, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is also in late-stage studies, but Johnson & Johnson paused its trial earlier this month to investigate an unexplained illness.
As the chief adviser to the government vaccine distribution initiative Operation Warp Speed, Dr. Moncef Slaoui told ABC’s Bob Woodruff this week that if a vaccine is authorized before the end of the year approximately 20 million to 40 million doses of it will be stockpiled and ready for distribution for a limited population. At first, only high priority Americans, like those over 65, will have access, but by the springtime more Americans should have access.
Slaoui said that vaccine trials are going as fast as it’s safe to go, pledging to resign if he felt undue pressure from the White House. Slaoui said that by June 2021, it's possible "everybody" in the United States could have been immunized.
-ABC News' Sony Salzman and Sasha Pezenik
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
Fact Check: US exports more energy than imports, but not completely energy independent, despite Trump claim
TRUMP'S CLAIM: "We are energy independent for the first time."
FACT CHECK: The U.S. exports more energy products like oil and liquid natural gas than it exports, but many parts of the country still rely on oil from other countries.
But the U.S. is not fully energy independent.
The amount of oil produced in the U.S. is about 1.25 million barrels a day short of demand, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and while imports are at a record low the country still relies on imported products for 3% of domestic petroleum consumption.
One of Trump's goals has been to make the U.S. energy independent, in part by expanding oil and gas drilling around the country including on public lands.
Last year, U.S. energy exports surpassed imports for the first time since 1952, largely due to increases in natural gas production.
-ABC News' Stephanie Ebbs