US Election 2020: Trump and Biden to face off in first presidential debate tomorrow

Team Udayavani, Sep 28, 2020, 11:57 AM IST

Washington: Republican incumbent President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden are all set to share the stage for the first time on Tuesday night when they will be going head-to-head in the first of the three presidential debates.

Dubbed as the “Super Bowl of American Democracy”, Trump, 74, and Biden, 77, would respond to questions on their track record, the Supreme Court, economy, race and violence in cities and integrity of the elections at the Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a key battleground state.

Popular Fox news anchor Chris Wallace would moderate the first debate, which would start at 9 pm EST (6:30 am IST). Steve Scully from C-SPAN Networks and Kristen Welker from NBC News would moderate the other two presidential debates on October 15 in Miami (Florida) and October 22 in Nashville (Tennessee), respectively.

Vice President Mike Pence, 61, and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, 55, will participate in the only vice-presidential debate, to be hosted by USA Today journalist Susan Page, in Salt Lake City in Utah on October 7.

All four debates are being organised by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The debates would be of 90 minutes duration.

In August, the CPD had turned down a request of the Trump campaign for a presidential debate in early September.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani were helping him prepare for the debates. The two were seated in the press briefing room along with the White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany during the news conference by the president.

Earlier in the day, Trump in a tweet demanded that Biden undergo a drug test before the debate.

“I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night. Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record-setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???” he tweeted.

Responding to a question at the news conference, Trump reiterated his demand that Biden should go for a drug test before the debate. He said he will also do the same.

Meanwhile, ahead of the debates, over 70 members of the US Congress wrote to the CPD to include climate change as one of the topics.