Republican President Donald Trump and former Vice President joe biden. Its going to begin at the top of this hour. Its all going to happen right here and the shot youre seeing on the screen right now. Thats the health emcaducation campus of Case Western University in cleveland, ohio. The debate was supposed to be somewhere else originally. It was supposed to be at the university of notre dame in indiana. But notre dame pulled out because of coronavirus concerns. They werent sure they could do it in a way that was safe. Worldwide coronavirus death toll has now passed 1 million people. The pandemic has prompted some logistical changes tonight from past debates. The candidate also apparently forego the traditional opening hand shake. The audience tonight in the room will be much smaller than usual, somewhere between 80 to 100 guest also be spaced throughout the hall. The candidates have each done a walk through of the debate hall earlier today. Their debate will last a total of 90 minutes. There will be no commercials. Youre advanced warned. Get your snacks ready now. No breaks. It will be divided roughly into six different 15minute long segments, each focusing on a different topic chosen by the moderator, Chris Wallace of fox news. The six topic areas are, trump and bidens records, Supreme Court, covid, the economy, race and violence in american cities, which is a topic heading that is a little bit controversial, and lastly, the integrity of the election. Those are the six preplanned 15minute segments for tonight. Almost guaranteed to come up with is the New York Times report revealing the president s taxes. Their reporting shows the phenomenal amount of money the president s businesses have consistently lost, how much debt and financial trouble hes in personally and in terms of his business, and how little hes actually paid in taxes over the years. Most years in the past two decades, the president has paid zero dollars in federal income tax. The year he was elected and his first year in the white house, he paid 750 total for each of those years. Even though the New York Times somehow got these tax returns, the president himself has still refused to release any of them on his own terms. But this afternoon, joe biden and his running mate, kamala harris, released their most recent tax returns. Joe bidens 2019 returns shows he paid roughly 300,000 in federal taxes. Again, thats compared to 750 paid by President Trump in 2016 and 2017. Tonights debate comes as President Trumps Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett began meeting with republican senators. They have promised to rush her confirmation through before the election, if they can. Even as the woman she would replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg was only laid to rest today at Arlington National cemetery. Sit a big night. We have a live interview coming up right here with the only person who has ever faced President Trump in a general election president ial debate, former secretary of state, 2016 democratic president ial nominee Hillary Clinton will be our guest here live in just a moment. But this is one of those nights, ive got the feeling. I mean, we planned for we were all covering the conventions together. Weve all been here for the big nights. But theres nothing quite like the first debate in a president ial contest that is already completely off the hook. Yeah. And i think the last time we were together was the last night of the republican convention, which was President Trumps sort of climax of propaganda and abusing the property of the government, showcasing his campaign at the white house grounds. Hell be deprived of some of those structural opportunities, i wont call them advantages, because who knows, maybe some people are offended by that. But he will stand on the stage with a moderator who was pretty darn tough on him. And with an opponent who is even the campaign will acknowledge, who is ahead in the polls. They dont believe that joe biden is ten points ahead, they think the race is somewhere five to six points ahead. Based on internal polling . Based on a combination of whatever, you know, snow globe theyre looking at. I have to assume its some sense from last time that their polling may look at more of their voters, and they have a case to make there. But the point is, even the Trump Campaign will acknowledge they are behind, and that they come into this debate tonight with more of a burden. To that end, there is no way that President Trump is telling the truth when he says that the only prep raugs aration he need be president. I have it on decent authority that there have been no sessions in the white house, and President Trump understands the political danger hes in tonight. So youre saying even though theyre saying hes not prepping, he thinks he doesnt need to, he has been doing traditional debate prep. When our white house reporters ask him, his answer is, being president is all the prep that i need. And i have reason to believe that is not at all the case. I dont know the details of that prep. I dont know if its a formal prep. Most president ial candidates, whether theyre incumbents or challengers, do mock sessions. And i dont have a lot of details about what has gone on. It is more than what President Trump has alluded to. It is such a trumpian kind of kabuki theater where hes trying to project hes done nothing. For the other side, i talked to a biden official today. Theyre running their own race. There are disadvantages to coming in ahead, as well. I worked for george w. Bush who blew half of his lead with a catastrophic first debate performance against john kerry. So the stakes are high for both. There is a curse of the incumbents first debate. When the incumbent is running for reelection, they always have a terrible debate. Barack obama had a terrible first debate. There is something in history that tells you that things are stacked against him. I think President Trump may or may not know that, but i think this has been trumpian spin that he hasnt prepared at all. Joe biden arrives now at the debate site in cleveland. They both have certain advantages coming in. I think that people the weirdest thing ive seen, and im sure youll think this is weird too, nicolle, is trying to talk biden down as a debater. Ive never seen that as a campaign i watched or participated in. Youre supposed to say oh, no, theyre an amazing debater and set the bar so high that they cant reach it. What they said is, hes barely alive, he cant do this. Youre saying the Trump Campaign has been denigrating bidens ability to debate. Its backwards. Youre supposed to raise him up. Then at the end, trump tweeted hes a great debater. His surrogates have been on fox news saying if biden can survive and say one sentence, he wins. You have to think about President Trump. A lot of people judged Hillary Clinton to have won all those debates, i did, as well. She knew the information, she had the substance. They each had similar bars they had to clear for different reasons. But people have to remember that fundamentally, since john f. Kennedy, debates are a tv show. Right . Even more so than other than this year, the conventions are a tv show. It really is a television program. Kennedy had the style that could completely outwit the idea of nixon. Nixon had the experience, but kennedy was a Better Television star. President trump, what we learned, and those block buster pieces in the New York Times were absolutely jaw dropping. Not because we didnt know the information, but the extent to which his entire the entire edifice was false. That the money didnt come from anything about real estate. Its all about tv. And the thing is, President Trump doesnt have a lot of skills, particularly when it comes to business or being the president , the things you need to be president , but he is good on tv. The first book that i recently did, i interviewed somebody from that was a part of the apprentice who told a very similar story. When they first showed up, and this was for the auditions in trump tower. What they were astounded by was how run down trump tower was. They were expecting it to be glittering, but it was a bit run down. Then they walked into the set that mark brunettes team had created, and that was a beautiful set that we all saw on the apprentice. It was about him being a celebrity on the apprentice and that allowing him to do the licensing deals and creating wealth, because he wasnt good at the other bit. But what this person said to me, the way that President Trump would prepare for the apprentice, he wanted it to seem like he listened to everybody in the board room, took in their plans, watched what they did, paid attention and made an assessment as to who should be fired. But that wasnt the way it worked. It was all a production. We know what reality tv is. Producers say, we need to fire this person versus that person. There were debates on who should be fired. What he was good at was a few lines that he was given to say that sounded donald trumpy, he could nail that. So trump is good at that. If you feed him three or four good zingers, which he used on Hillary Clinton. Do you think he didnt prepare those . Of course he did. So all that his team has to do is prepare a few zingers intended to throw joe biden off and see if joe biden can handle it. Thats not all they have to do, but thats the way they can most play to his strengths. Exactly. Whereas joe biden is coming in and attempting to project what it looks like to be president , which he knows. Hes been Vice President. He knows that job and how to be that. He also knows president ial and Vice President ial debating. He does know this stuff. Hes survived in politics for 40 years for a reason. He is good debater. Remember a noun, a verb, and 9 11 . I do. I still remember it. Biden is not bad at this. He also debated sarah palin, where she wasnt there facing any Political Risk for not knowing her stuff. Its the performance, and he navigated that brilliantly. In a way that didnt help her at all. She didnt she was a road kill at the end of that debate. She did what everybody expected her to do. Biden is the one that outperformed expectations, when it seemed like there were so many pitfalls. You would know that story. Even now the other thing is i just feel the race is so set. Theres very few people who are going to make a decision based on this debate. People have decided it depends on what happens. Somebody gets up there and bites the head off of a bat, people are going to make a decision. Are you telling me thats not 100 going to happen . Thats a whole different show. I believe that the undecided voter is a more decide to vote more than they are i could oscillate between these two people. The structural externalities around this race are unescapable. It always feels that way, particularly with covid. There is something structurally about what the country is going through that cant be spun and cant be frittered into something that we see as a personality contest between these two. And to that point, as we await the start of tonights debate, we asked chris hayes to look specifically at the issue of covid in terms of the way its likely to be a pivotal topic tonight and one that sort of is different than any other thing that you could bring in as a topic of discussion for a debate. Hey, chris. Hey, rachel. Its true. Everything that happens now happens against the context of a once in a century pandemic. 740 more americans lost their lives today. Its a topic the president doesnt want to draw attention to. Hes been soldiering along, like its not happening because things are not good. And he cannot happy talk the virus away and hope things go back to normal. The pandemic has sickened over 7 million americans. Its killed 206,000 and counting. And cases right now are rising in many states across the country. Back in march and april, we got the initial spike. It was horrifying. Lockdown, extremely deadly, particularly in the northeast, and that receded somewhat. But by midsummer, we had another big spike in arizona, texas, and florida. And its worth remembering that second spike also correlated with the president s worst polling where joe biden was leading by eight, nine points. We saw outlier polls in double digits and 13 points. And now we are seeing another increase in cases. The green bay area of wisconsin for one example is in the midst of an acute crisis. A local doctor warning that four hospitals in the area have reached near full capacity amid a remarkable surge in coronavirus patients. North and south dakota also seeing look at those charts, huge spikes over the last two weeks. Cases in south dakota have increased 91 . Places like florida, where they added more than 3,000 cases today alone as the republican governor there moves to fully reopen all businesses, that includes bars, nightclubs, stuff like that, at full capacity and pushing local jurs diisdictions make sure kids are back in school. And in new york city, the Positivity Rate ticked up to over 3 , the highest in months. And that comes as 300,000 kids went back to their classrooms for the First Time Since march. So weve made some progress against the virus. What we have made progress in is knowledge. It is a novel coronavirus, we have more testing capacity, we do a million tests a day. Weve learned really important lessons about transmisability, what kinds of things drive outbreaks. Bars, for instance. Outdoors is safer than indoors, but its about to get cold in much of the country. While many cities and states are opening indoor bars and restaurants, and ive got to say, covering this, its hard to look at all that and think that the current trajectory, the current equal l that it is sustainable. I want to bring in dr. Gupta, msnbc medical contributor. We know this will come up tonight. Chris wallace identified it as one of the big topics for the debate. What is the basic things americans should know, the ground facts as they watch tonight . Chris, good to see you. And thank you for the opportunity. You know, first i just want to say americans, i hear from my patients across the country that are feeling scared and are anxious for themselves, family members, if they have children, for their children. So this is really important. First, youre going to probably hear happy talk on the response. Lets be cheer here, no model is perfect, but we think up to 200,000 plus souls that were lost to this virus, greater than 50 , if not 60 were avoidable. They would be with us here today, chris. So thats number one. Lets focus on the lives lost and how many of those were avoidable, if we had the right, proper, Quick Response back when the president learned that this was an airborne virus on february 7. Thats number one. Number two, with the holidays coming, the question i get is how can i travel home safely to see my kids, to see my grand parts . You mentioned a million tests today, chris, and thats true. But they dont have the right type of testing. They want rapid point of care testing thats high quality. We just dont have enough of these rapid molecular point of care tests to get to every american. We should have had enough of them by now. The defense production act was initiated early. Ppe, we dont have enough of these guys, especially on the west coast. And finally, ill say, chris, therapeutics. We dont have a therapeutic that can save lives right now. Dr. Gupta, thank you for that ahead of tonights debate on this most important issue. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And thank you for joining us. Rachel . Thank you, chris. And you can hear joy and anicole and i reacting. Just hearing dr. Gupta saying 50 of those deaths were preventable had we had good policy. With the stuff we already know how to do. And President Trump is not expected to admit any mistakes tonight in the response to not admit any mistakes on anything ever. But he is outside of the bubble right now. Youve seen the way these interviews have gone. When he steps outside of the fox news bubble, hes a different person, because he cant just shout down Chris Wallace. Hes not the press corps that he can walk away from. He cant walk away. He has to stay on that stage, and there is an entire section on covid he cant escape. It will be interesting to see how he responds to that. And the debate isnt an interview. It will be very interesting to see how wallace handles the two big egos on that stage, and a lot of machismo on the stage. He said he wants to be as invisible as possible tonight, but thats questionable. It will be fascinating to watch. Thats why tens of millions of people are going to be watching this tonight. Theres only one person on earth who actually knows from personal experience what its like to debate President Trump one on one on a president ial debate stain. She did it three times in 2016. Shes the only person in the world who has done it. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton will be our guest, live, here, next. Guest, live, here, next. Im looking for my client. Im his accountant. Im so sorry. [ sighs ] hey hey man youre here. You dont trust me here is vegas, do you . Well. I thought we had a breakthrough with the volkswagen. We did. Yes. We broke through. Thats the volkswagen thats the cross sport. Wow. Seatbelts. Please, just tell me where were going. Were all finding ways to keep moving. But how do we make sure the direction were headed is forward . At fidelity, youll get the planning and advice to prepare you for the future, without sacrificing the things that are important to you today. Well help you plan for healthcare costs, taxes and any other uncertainties along the way. Because with fidelity, you can feel confident that the only direction youre moving is forward. Noand if youre troubledan a liby falls and bleeds,ners. Worry follows you everywhere. Over 100,000 people have left blood thinners behind with watchman. Its a onetime, minimally invasive procedure that reduces stroke risk and bleeding worryfor life. Watchman. Its one time. For a lifetime. Looking back at it now, it is weird. It is like she had a krystal ball or something. We lived through it four years ago in the moment. But no with just four years in hindsight, it looks like uncannily accurate fortune telling. One of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how hard fought a campaign is, at the end of the campaign, the loser concedes to the winner. Are you saying youre not prepared now what im saying is i will tell you at the time. Ill keep you in suspense. Well, chris, let me respond to that, because thats horrifying. Do you want to see the court overturn roe v wade. If we put another two or three justices on, thats what is going to happen. I will release my tax returns, and thats my lawyers say dont do it. You have to ask yourself, why wont he release his tax returns . I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe hes not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe hes not as charitable as he claims to be. Or maybe he doesnt want the American People, all of you watching tonight, to know that hes paid nothing in federal taxes. That makes me smart. Democratic president ial nominee Hillary Clinton did have some kind of magic crystal ball in 2016, we just didnt know it at the time. Were less than an hour away from the first president ial debate of 2020. No one on earth is in a better position than Hillary Clinton to know what Vice President joe biden will be facing tonight when he steps on that stain. Hillary clinton is our former secretary of state, former senator, first lady, president ial candidate. Her new podcast debuts today, called you and me both. Madame secretary, thank you for being here with us tonight. Were happy to have you here. Oh, thanks, rachel. Good to talk to you again. Can you bring yourself to watch this tonight, or as soon as youre done with us are you going to turn off the tv for the night . Oh, no. Im going to watch it with some real interest, and a certain level of, you know, expectation, because unlike four years ago, President Trump now has a record. Everyone has seen what he has done to our country, what he has failed to do. Theyve watched him totally fumble the response to the coronavirus. Hes watched theyve watched him threaten to and probably now be able to take away health care from americans. And on it goes. So joe biden is well prepared to tell the American People what he will do as our president. His toughness, his humanity i think will be a stark contrast to President Trump. So im looking forward to it. Do you feel like there were sort of democratic candidate Lessons Learned from your experience going up against him three years ago . I mean, weve been talking about how the one thing that President Trump has proven to be good at is being on tv and dsh debates, to a certain extent, it is going to be something americans watch on tv as a bit of a political tv show. Gaming him gauging him is hard. He looks to get personal and petty. Have we developed a sense of best practices for staying within your own ethics and your own approach and also fending some of that off . I think so. Look, i think that his big advantage of having been a socalled reality tv star and then in peop been if peoples living rooms for a number of years before he ran has pretty much run its course. I think his series is about to be canceled, because its just the same story over and over again. Lying with impunity, attacking when you have nothing to say. Unable to give an answer that is frankly coherent. So i think that joe knows all that. I know the people who have been working with him and preparing him, theyre well aware of how President Trump behaves on a stage. But i think the American People are also aware of it. And, you know, you can only lie so many times. You can only try to avoid responsibility so many times. When final ly people are going o be looking at each other saying weve seen this before. Mad sam same secretary, its nicolle. I wanted to ask you about the impact of four years of telling lies, because you took the debate stage three times, and you did a lot of the Fact Checking yourself. You didnt wait for the moderators to do it. You did the pushback and you had the facts on your side. Hes now told upward of 20,000 lies to the American People. His numbers are unchanged from the first year as president. What do you think the impact is of four years of having the most powerful person in the Republican Party and everybody around him nod their head along with the lies . How does joe biden debate somebody like that . I think joe sticks to what he has to say to the American People. Hes really there to demonstrate to the American People that he will be a president that will take responsibility, that will get the job done, that does care about their kids going to school in the middle of a covid epidemic, that will do Everything Possible to restore the economy for hardworking people who have lost their jobs, who will deal with the issues that are the kind of bread and butter issues, the issues that people are talking about and afraid of right now. And so i really believe that, you know, joe has a very clear message and a mission tonight. That is not to get drawn into the craziness that President Trump exhibits at every turn. Yes, maybe check him once or twice. But stay on focus about what hes going to do as our president. Hey, secretary clinton, its joy. Great to talk with you. Hi, joy. The question i have is sort of about the balance of former Vice President biden. Weve seen that there have been small slippages for President Trump as these stories have come out, the latest story about him denigrating evangelicals, the alleged denigration of our war dead. Its taken little pieces off of his base. But for the most part its remained static. What would you advise joe biden to do in terms of the balance of trying to broaden his coalition tonight and what will be a very well watched debate . And in terms of exciting the base of the Democratic Party . I think he is doing both right now, and that will be part of what he conveys tonight. Because i really believe, joy, that there has been doubts that have been taking hold in a lot of the people who have supported President Trump in the past. And thats particularly true for women. Women have to make the decision, do i send my kid to school, do i keep my kid at home, does that mean i dont go to work . A lot of the burden of actually coping with the coronavirus is falling on women, particularly moms. And i just see a lot of erosion among women who might have been, you know, willing to give President Trump a chance the last time. And i really think also what joe is doing is telling the American People, look, come out and vote, because everything you care about is on the ballot. Every single issue that matters to you, and you can really count on me to work hard for you, and not to be more interested in settling scores and making crazy allegations and lowering our stature around the world and making it impossible for us to come together as a nation. So there is a big audience of people who didnt vote last time. People who voted third party last time. People who are not in the trump base but who i think are being convinced that trump is not in their interest and theyre going to show up and look at the early numbers about voting. Its overwhelming. People are really making the effort this time. I think thats a big part of what joe is going to accomplish in these debates. Secretary clinton, you mentioned the penchant here for settling scores and crazy allegations. I guess we should. Be surprised that the Trump Administration has tried to bring you and your 2016 campaign back into this today, just hours before the debate. If you wouldnt mind talking with us about that. We need to take a break as we watch the president arrive. Well talk to you about that when we come back. You about that when we come back. Our family is from . What about here . Here . Here . Daddy, is that where were from . Well, actually. Were from a lot of places. You see were from here and there and here. Turn questions youve always had into stories you cant wait to share; with ancestry. Skip to cold relief fast. Always had into stories alkaseltzer plus power max gels. With 25 more concentrated power. Oh, what a relief it is so fast itswhat if i sleep hot . Ers fall sal. Or cold . W sleep number 360 smart bed. 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