NASHVILLE, Tenn. (NewsNation Now) — President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden discussed “fighting COVID-19” as a key topic in the final presidential debate until Election Day.
The coronavirus pandemic has become one of the central issues of the 2020 election.
The United States has had 8.3 million cases of COVID-19, as of Thursday and nearly 223,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, a warning posted by Johns Hopkins that there are a “number of anomalies in testing data.”
Earlier this week, NewsNation sat down at the White House complex for an in-depth interview with three of the top officials on the front lines of America’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
Several days after the first presidential debate, President Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 and spent several days at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. The president, the first lady and their son have all made a full recovery.
In addition to the medical side of the pandemic, the economy continues to struggle. New unemployment numbers out Thursday showed 787,000 people filed for unemployment benefits last week.
Congress and The White House have been negotiating another coronavirus stimulus package, but so far nothing has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Watch this section of the debate in the player above.
This is one of six topics planned for Thursday’s debate, including Fighting COVID-19, American Families, Race in America, Climate Change, National Security and Leadership.
The debate features six 15-minute segments with two-minutes of uninterrupted opening statements. During the two-minute period, NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker will mute the microphone of the candidate who is not supposed to speak.
The open discussion portion, which counts for the other 11 minutes of each segment, will not feature a mic-muting option, though the commission noted that “time taken up during any interruptions will be returned to the other candidate.”
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced the rule changes Monday in an effort to combat frequent interruptions seen in the first debate. In a statement, the commission said it “had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed-upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.”
NewsNation provided unedited sections of the debate all night, so you can see what both candidates said.
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