Tonights debate is sponsored by the commission on president ial debates, and conducted under health and safety protocols. The audience in the hall has promised to remain silent. No cheers, boos, or other interruptions except for right now as we welcome to the stage former Vice President joe biden, and president donald j. Trump. [applause] ms. Welker i want to say good evening to both of you. This will cover six major topics. At the beginning of each section, each candidate will have two minutes to answer without interruption. The debate will turn on your microphone only when it is your time to answer, and turn it off exactly when two minutes expire. After that, both microphones will remain on, but please speak one at a time. The goal is to hear each other so the American People can hear every word of what you have to say. If you are ready, lets start. We will begin with the fight against the coronavirus. President trump, the first question is to you. The country is heading into a dangerous new phase, more than 40,000 americans are in the hospital tonight with covid, including record numbers in tennessee. Since you last shared a stage, 16,000 americans have died. Please be specific, how would you lead the country during this next stage of the coronavirus . Pres. Trump as you know, 2. 2 Million People were expected to died. We closed the greatest economy in the world to fight this horrible disease that came from china. It is a worldwide pandemic, all over the world, you see spikes in europe and other places now. If you noticed, the mortality rate is down 85 . The excess mortality rate is way down and much lower than any other country. We are fighting it hard. There is a spike, there was a spike in florida that is gone. There was a very big spike in texas, its now gone. There was a spike in arizona, it is gone. There were spikes in other places that will soon be gone. We have a vaccine that is ready and it will be announced within weeks and it will be delivered. We have operation warp speed, which is, the military will distribute the vaccine. From personal experience, i was in the hospital, i had it, i got better. I had something that they gave me, a therapeutic they would call it some would say it is a cure i got better very fast, or i would not be here tonight. They say im immune, whether it is four months or a lifetime, im immune. More people are getting better. We have a worldwide problem. This is a worldwide problem. I have been congratulated by many countries on what we have been able to do. If you look at what we have done in terms of goggles, masks, gowns, everything else. We are making ventilators and distributing them all over the world. It will go away. We are rounding the turn, we are rounding the corner. Its going away. Ms. Welker former Vice President , how would you lead the country out of this crisis . Mr. Biden 220,000 americans dead. Anyone is responsible for not taking control. In fact, not saying, i take no responsibility initially. Anybody who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of United States of the america. We are in a situation where there are a thousand deaths a day, a thousand deaths a day. Over 70,000 new cases per day. Compared to what is going on in europe, as the new england medical journal said, they are starting from a low rate, we are starting from a high rate. The expectation is we will have another 200,000 americans dead between now and the end of the year. If we just wore these masks, the president s advisers told him, we could save 100,000 lives. We are in a circumstance where the president still has no plan. No comprehensive plan. I would make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time, make sure we move in the direction of rapid testing, and invest in rapid testing. I would make sure we set up National Standards how to open schools and businesses so they can be safe. We are in a situation now where the new england medical journal, one of the most serious journals in the world said for the first time ever, that the way this president has responded to this crisis has been tragic. I will take care of this and end this, i will make sure we have a plan. Ms. Welker President Trump, i would like to follow up on your comments. You talked about a therapeutic, you also said a vaccine is coming within weeks. Is that a guarantee . Pres. Trump no, it is not a guarantee, but it will be by the end of the year, but it has a good chance. Two companies within a matter of weeks. Ms. Welker which companies . Pres. Trump Johnson Johnson is doing very well, moderna is doing well. We have others working with other countries, particularly europe. Ms. Welker this is new information. You say a vaccine is coming within weeks, your Officials Say it could take well into 2021, and then they say the country will be Wearing Masks into 2022. Is your timeline realistic . Pres. Trump no, i think my timeline is more accurate. I dont think they count on the military as i do, we have a general who is head of logistics. This is an easy distribution. We expect to have a vaccine and 100 million vials. Ms. Welker Vice President biden, your reaction. If a vaccine was approved, what steps would you take to give americans confidence in a vaccine if approved . Mr. Biden make sure it is totally transparent. Scientists will see it, go through the processes. This is the same fellow who told us it would end by easter, who told you dont worry, we will end this five summer. We are about to go through a dark winter, and he has no clear plan and no prospect that there will be a vaccine available for the middle of next year. Ms. Welker your reaction . Pres. Trump i dont think we will have a dark winter. We have opened the country, we learned and understand the disease. When i closed and banned china, and ultimately europe, china was in january months later he said i was xenophobic, now he is saying i should have moved quicker. He did not move quicker. He was many months behind me. He ran the h1n1 swine flu, and it was a disaster. Had that this kind of numbers, 700,000 people would be dead now. It was a far less lethal disease. His own person who ran that for him, as you know was his chief of staff, said it was catastrophic, horrible, we didnt know what we are doing. Now he tells us how to do this. Everything he said about every move that we should make, that is what we have done. He was way behind us. Mr. Biden my response is he is xenophobic but not because he shut access from china and he did it after 40 countries had done that. He made sure we had 44 people in china trying to get to wuhan to determine what exactly the source was what did he say in january . He said, no. He said the president of china is being transparent and we owe a debt of gratitude. Then he started talking about using the defense act to get what we need to protect people. He had nothing he did, virtually nothing then he gets out of the hospital and says dont worry, it will be over soon. Come on, there is not another serious scientist in the world who thinks it will be over soon. Pres. Trump we cannot lock ourselves in a basement like joe does. He has the ability to lock himself up he made a lot of money someplace. He has this thing about living in a basement. I, as the president , could not do that. I would love to put myself in a basement and go away for a year and a half i cant do that. Every meeting i have, and i meet a lot of families including gold star families every meeting and i had to meet them it would have been horrible to cancel i said this is dangerous. You catch it. I caught it. I learned a lot. I learned a lot. Great hospitals. Now i recovered. 99. 9 of young people recovered. 99 of people recover. We have to recover. We cannot close our nation. We have to open schools, we cannot close our nation. Ms. Welker the cdc has said young people can get sick and pass it. Vice president biden, i want to talk about strategy. Mr. Biden may i respond to that . Ms. Welker 30 seconds. Mr. Biden he says we are learning to live with it people are dying with it. You folks who have an empty chair at the Kitchen Table, that man or woman reaching over where their wife or husband was is gone learning to live with it . Come on, we are dying with it. When is the last time is it really dangerous . Will you tell the people it is dangerous now . What should we do about the danger question mark you say, i take no responsibility. Pres. Trump excuse me, it is not my fault that it came here. It is not joes fault, it is chinas fault. They kept it from going into the rest of china but not coming out to the world, including europe and ourselves. Mr. Biden the fact is when we knew it was coming, when it hit, what happened . What did the president say . He said, dont worry, it will go away, it will be gone by easter, the warm weather. He said he was kidding, a lot of people think he was serious. A whole range of what he has said, he thinks we are in control. We are about to lose 200,000 more people. Ms. Welker President Trump. Pres. Trump i was kidding on that. To finish this, when i closed, he said i should not have closed, and that went on for months. Nancy pelosi was dancing in the streets in chinatown in san francisco. He said this is a terrible thing, you are a xenophobe, i think he called me racist. Now he says i should have closed it earlier. Mr. Biden i did not say either of those things. I talked about his xenophobia in a different context, not about closing the border to chinese coming to the United States. Ms. Welker i want to talk about your different strategies. Pres. Trump he thought i should not have closed the border. Ms. Welker lets talk about your different strategies towards dealing with this. Mr. Biden, you said you would support shutdowns if scientists recommended it. What you say to americans who fear the cost on the economy, depression, domestic Substance Abuse outweighs exposure to the virus . Mr. Biden i would say i will shut down the virus and not the country. It is his ineptitude to shut down in large part, why businesses have gone under, so many people have lost their living, those concerns are real. He should have been negotiated instead of in a sand trap in his golf course. Make sure people have the capacity. Ms. Welker you have not ruled out more shutdowns . Mr. Biden no. We need standards. The standard is if you have a reproduction rate in a community above a certain level, everybody says slow up. More social distancing. Do not open bars and gymnasiums, do not open until you get this under more control. When you do open, give people the capacity to open, and do it safely. Schools need a lot of money, they need to deal with ventilation systems and smaller classes, more teachers. He has refused to support that money up until now. Pres. Trump i have to respond. All he does is talk about shutdowns. Forget about him, his democratic governors, cuomo in new york, look at california, pennsylvania, north carolina, democrats have shut down so tight and they are dying. He supports all these people read all he talks about is shutdowns. We will not shut down. We have to open our schools. I have a young son who also tested positive. By the time i spoke to the doctor, he was fine it went away. Young people, their immune system. Ms. Welker you have demanded schools open in person, but just yesterday, boston became the latest city to move its Public School system entirely online after a coronavirus spike. What is your message to parents who worry that sending kids to school will endanger them . Pres. Trump i want to open the schools, the transmittal rate to teachers is very small. I want to open the schools and our country. We will not have a country. We cannot keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs, committing suicide, depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody has seen before. Tremendous abuse. We have to open our country. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. That is what is happening, and he will close down the country if one person in our massive bureaucracy says we should close it down. Mr. Biden simply not true. We ought to be able to walk and to gum at the same time. We ought to be able to safely open, but you need resources to open. If you are going to open a business, you need social distancing. If you have a restaurant, you need plexiglas dividers so people cannot infect one another. You need to be in a position to take testing rapidly and know if a person is in fact infected. You need to be able to trace and divide resources to do this. That is not inconsistent with saying we will make sure we open safely. All the teachers out there, not many of you will die, so dont worry about it come on. Pres. Trump if you look at what has happened to new york, it is a ghost town. When you talk about plexiglas, these are restaurants that are dying, businesses with no money. Putting up plexiglas is unbelievably expensive, and not the answer. You are going to sit there in a cubicle wrapped in plastic these businesses are dying. You cannot do that to people. Look at new york and what has happened to my wonderful city i loved it it is dying. Everyone is leaving new york. Mr. Biden take a look at what new york has done in turning the curve down in terms of people dying. I do not look at this as blue states and red states, we are the United States. Look at the states having a spike, they are the red states, thus states in the midwest, in the upper midwest that is where the spike is occurring significantly. They are all americans, and what we have to do is say wear these masks and get help that businesses need. Money has already been passed to do that, it has been out there since the beginning of the summer, and nothing has happened. Pres. Trump new york has lost 11,000 people. Take a look at what is happening in pennsylvania, where they have had it closed. Look at what is happening with your friend in michigan where her husband is the only one allowed to do anything it is like a prison. It was ruled unconstitutional. Look at north carolina, they have spikes and they have been closed, they are getting killed financially. We cannot let that happen. We have to open up. We have to protect our seniors and elderly, we have to protect our seniors with heart problems and diabetes problems. We have the best testing in the world by far that is why we have so many cases. Ms. Welker let me followup, you called dr. Fauci, the best known Infectious Disease expert, a, a disaster. You described medical experts as idiots. If you are not listening them, who were you listening to . Pres. Trump i listen to all of them, including anthony, but he did say do not wear a mask. He did say this is not going to be a problem. I think he is a democrat, but that is ok. He said, we are not going to have a problem at all. When joe says that i said dr. Fauci said and others i am not knocking them. Nobody knew what this was or where it was coming from. We have learned a lot. Anthony said do not wear a mask, now he says to wear a mask. His exact words, this is no problem, it will go away soon. He is allowed to make mistakes. He is a good person. Mr. Biden my response, think about what the president knew in january and did not tell the American People. He was told this was a serious virus spread in the air, and much worse than the flu. He went on record and said to one of your colleagues, recorded, that he knew how dangerous it was but he did not want to tell us because he did not want us to panic. Americans, do not panic. He panicked. Guess what . In the meantime, we find out in the New York Times that his folks went to wall street and said this is dangerous and a memo out of that meeting, not from his administration, but from brokers said to sell short. Ms. Welker i will give you 30 seconds to respond. Pres. Trump you are the one who takes all the money from wall street. You have raised a lot of money, tremendous amounts of money, and every time you make money, deals are made. I could make so much more money, i could call the heads of wall street, of every company in america, i would blow away every record. That puts me in a bad position. You should not bring up wall street. You take money from wall street. I could blow away your records like you would not believe. We have plenty of money. We beat Hillary Clinton with a tiny fraction of the money. Ms. Welker we are going to move on to the next session, national security. I want to start with the security of elections and breaking news overnight. Intelligence officials confirmed russia and iran are working to influence this election. They have obtained Voter Registration information. Iran sent intimidating messages to florida voters. Mr. Vice president , what would you do put an end to this threat . Mr. Biden i made it clear that any country, no matter who, if they interfere with american elections, they will pay a price. It has been overwhelmingly clear this election that russia has been involved, china has been involved, and now we learn that iran is involved. They will pay a price if i am elected. Interfering with american sovereignty, that is what is going on. American sovereignty. To the best of my knowledge, the president has not said anything to putin a lot. I do not know why he has not said a word to putin about it. My guess is he would be more outspoken with regard to the iranians. The point is this, we are in a situation where we have Foreign Countries trying to interfere in the outcome of our election. His own notional security advisor told him what is happening with his buddy his buddy, Rudy Giuliani he is being used as a russian pawn, fed information that is not true. Then what happens, nothing. Then you find out everything going on about russia is wanting to make sure i do not get elected as the next president of the United States, because they know that i know them, and they know me. I dont understand why this president is unable to take on putin when he is paying bounties to kill american soldiers in afghanistan. I do not know why he does not do it. It is worth asking the question, why isnt that being done . Any country that interferes will pay a price, because they are affecting our sovereignty. Ms. Welker President Trump, same question to you. For two elections in a row there is substantial interference by foreign adve