1st presidential debate between Trump and Biden spirals into chaotic clash
Highlights from the first presidential debate held in Cleveland.
President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden faced off from a social distance in the first presidential debate of 2020 in Cleveland, just five weeks out from Election Day.
The first presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic came on the heels of bombshell reporting from The New York Times on two decades of Trump's tax records, ahead of a contentious Supreme Court confirmation process in the Senate and as the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Biden maintains a 10-point edge among both registered and likely voters.
The coronavirus pandemic's impact on the race was also on display as the two candidates didn't partake in a handshake, customary at the top of such events. The size of the audience was also limited and everyone attending the debate had to undergo COVID-19 testing and follow other public health protocols.
The debate’s moderator, Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday," selected six topics for Tuesday with each segment expected to get approximately 15 minutes: Trump's and Biden's records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in U.S. cities, and the integrity of the election -- the final topic coming as Trump over the weekend wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Latest headlines:
Biden heads to Ohio for debate
Former Vice President Joe Biden boarded a new campaign plane in Wilmington, Delaware, at 3:18pm as he gets ready to head to Cleveland, Ohio, for the debate tonight.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle
In Pennsylvania, advantage Biden with a big boost from women: POLL
Overwhelming support in Philadelphia and its suburbs lift former Vice President Joe Biden to a clear lead in crucial Pennsylvania, with backing from college-educated white people and women -- notably white, moderate and suburban women -- central to his advantage in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
President Donald Trump, for his part, is suffering attrition among his 2016 supporters; 8% of them now back Biden instead. While a small slice of the electorate, it’s a potentially important factor in a state Trump won by 44,292 votes out of nearly 6.2 million cast four years ago.
Likely voters support Biden over Trump by 54 to 45%, almost exactly matching a national ABC/Post poll released Sunday. The result includes more than a 2 to 1 Biden lead in the populous Philadelphia suburbs, home to nearly a quarter of likely voters, and close results in northeastern and western Pennsylvania, leaving only the conservative center of the state clearly to Trump.
See more data on this new poll here.
-Gary Langer of Langer Research Associates, conducted the poll.
-ABC News' Isabella Meneses contributed to this report.
Biden, Harris release 2019 tax returns
The Biden campaign released Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ 2019 tax returns, a clear effort to draw a sharp contrast with the revelations about Trump’s tax returns reported by the New York Times, ahead of tonight’s debate.
With Tuesday’s release Biden has made public 22 years of records, and Harris 15 years.
The releases were posted to Biden’s campaign site.
-ABC News' Mary Bruce and Molly Nagle
Trump vs. Biden on the issues: Health
With unprecedented unemployment in the United States, where health care is inextricably linked to employment, and a coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe, it's safe to say that on Nov. 3, health is on the ballot.
As it stands, more than 200,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. Another 13 million are unemployed.
Health might be a political football in 2020, but it's also a deeply personal issue that affects every American voter. Given health's crucial significance this year, the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund polled 4,220 likely voters in battleground states between Aug. 25 and Sept. 20 on which health care issues mattered most to them, and which candidate -- President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden -- they thought would be more likely to address those health concerns.
-ABC News' Erin Schumaker
FACT CHECK: Trump overstates his early actions in containing the virus
TRUMP'S CLAIM: "It's China's fault, it should have never happened. They stopped it from going in. But it was China's fault. By my doing it early -- in fact, Dr. Fauci said, 'President Trump saved thousands of lives.' Many of your Democrat governors said, 'President Trump did a phenomenal job.'"
FACT CHECK: Trump is overstating his early actions in containing the virus by suggesting his travel restrictions from China were critical.
While Dr. Anthony Fauci has confirmed that those restrictions were important, Trump is omitting a major miscalculation he made early on in the pandemic -- not restricting travel from Europe.
"The president's decision to essentially have a major blocking of travel from China, that already had an effect of not seeding the way, in Europe," Fauci told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" in March. "What we're doing now with the other travel restrictions -- so you block infections from coming in," Fauci continued, adding that containment and mitigation efforts were implemented to keep us away from that worst-case scenario."
Up to 75% of the coronavirus specimens circulating in the New York City area in early March were genetically similar to strains seen in Europe and other areas of North America, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published in July.
Although Fauci has said that the president's travel restrictions did save lives, he has also stated on numerous occasions that if mitigation efforts such as social distancing and mask wearing were implemented earlier, then many lives could have been saved.
"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. ... If we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different," Fauci said during an interview on CNN in April.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos