By John McCormick and Alex Leary 

President Trump and Democrat Joe Biden offered starkly differing views of the administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, traded accusations about their personal finances and questioned each other's records on economic and racial-justice issues in the final debate before the Nov. 3 election.

The tone of Thursday night's debate was less combative than during the pair's first meeting three weeks earlier, with fewer interruptions, as their microphones were muted at times. The session was held after more than 47 million Americans -- more than a third of the total 2016 vote -- already have cast ballots.

Mr. Trump, who frequently interrupted Mr. Biden and the moderator at the first debate, offered a calmer delivery, and both candidates delved further into policy issues than at the first meeting. But certain topics, such as race, ignited fiery exchanges.

Much of the early portion of the debate was devoted to the pandemic. Mr. Trump, noting his own recent experience with the virus, said his administration had taken tough steps to save lives.

"We closed up the greatest economy in the world in order to fight this horrible disease that came from China," Mr. Trump said. "We're rounding the turn. We're rounding the corner. It's going away."

Mr. Biden countered that the president lacked a national strategy and had misled Americans about the severity of the crisis that claimed more than 222,000 lives across the country, with 8.3 million reported U.S. infections.

"Anyone who's responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America," Mr. Biden said as he provided the latest statistics on new cases and deaths. "We're in a circumstance where the president thus far still has no plan, no comprehensive plan."

The former vice president offered stark predictions about the nation's potential challenges ahead with the pandemic, saying many more people would die without a change in strategy.

"We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter," Mr. Biden said. "He has no clear plan and there's no prospect that there's going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year."

The president said the country cannot remain locked up, jabbing that his rival has remained in a basement during the campaign. Mr. Biden made few in-person appearances over the summer and has a lighter travel schedule than the president.

"We can't close up our nation or you're not going to have a nation," Mr. Trump said, a point he made repeatedly.

"I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country," Mr. Biden said, adding that the country needs more resources to allow schools and businesses to fully reopen.

Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested Mr. Biden and his family members had benefited financially from his time as vice president, when his son Hunter Biden had business dealings in Ukraine.

A report released by Senate Republicans said two Obama administration officials raised concerns that Hunter Biden's position on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company created the perception of a conflict of interest with his father's work. The report did not find that Joe Biden sought the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect the company from investigation.

"I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life," Mr. Biden said.

"There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey," the former vice president said. "He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family."

Mr. Trump repeated his arguments that the country would suffer economically under Mr. Biden: "If he's elected, the stock market will crash."

The candidates also clashed over foreign policy, with Mr. Trump defending attempts to deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and they offered divergent views on health care.

Mr. Trump said the Affordable Care Act was facing a Supreme Court challenge because the law was "no good." He said his administration, which is backing the challenge to the law, would run the health program well if it survives.

Mr. Trump, who has cast Mr. Biden as beholden to progressive members of his party, suggested that Mr. Biden would be forced to adopt "socialized medicine" if elected. "Bernie Sanders wants it. The Democrats want it," Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Biden said that he would push for a public option to compete with private insurers, not an expansion of Medicare for all Americans. "The reason why I had such a fight with 20 candidates for the nomination was I support private insurance," Mr. Biden said of the Democratic primary. He pledged that no American would lose private insurance under his health plan unless they chose the public option.

On immigration, Mr. Biden acknowledged the Obama administration's struggles to find consensus in Congress for broad reforms, including criticism it oversaw widespread deportations. "It took too long to get it right," he said. Mr. Trump was put on the defensive over a new report that the parents of more than 500 children separated at the haven't been found.

The event at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., moderated by NBC's Kristen Welker, was expected to be their last joint appearance before a large television audience, with national polls showing the incumbent trailing and his campaign at a cash disadvantage.

Tumultuous news cycles dominated by the pandemic, economic challenges and racial unrest have failed to move the needle much on the race's national polling for most of the summer and fall.

A national poll average from RealClearPolitics shows Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden by 7.9 percentage points, and state surveys suggest he's also facing close contests in some battlegrounds he easily won four years ago. He and his aides have projected optimism by suggesting that the surveys are wrong, as some were in states that delivered his 2016 victory.

The former vice president's campaign started October with a cash-on-hand balance almost three times as large as Mr. Trump's, giving him a financial edge in race's closing days. Mr. Biden had $177.3 million at the end of last month, compared with $63.1 million for Mr. Trump, filings with the Federal Election Commission this week showed.

Mr. Biden plans to speak Friday near his home in Delaware on how he would address the pandemic and bolster the economy, followed by a Saturday visit to Bucks County, Pa. He ramped up his travel schedule this fall, but he spent most of this week at home preparing for the debate.

Mr. Trump has been doing campaign rallies nearly every day and is set to travel to his adopted home state of Florida. He is scheduled to hold rallies Friday in The Villages, a mega retirement community in the center of the state, and then Pensacola, another area when his campaign wants to run up the vote total.

Saturday morning, Mr. Trump is expected to cast an in-person early vote in West Palm Beach and then hold rallies in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.

--Joshua Jamerson, Madeleine Ngo and Sabrina Siddiqui contributed to this article.

Write to John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 22, 2020 23:06 ET (03:06 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.