The day of the second and last has come tv debate ahead of the November 3 presidential election between US President Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden. An eagerly awaited appointment all over the world that could affect the electoral result, giving an orientation to that 5% of voters who are still undecided about who to vote for. Trump's will remains to succeed, thanks to his charisma and his attacks, in reversing the fortunes of the presidential race that he currently sees the Democratic candidate has a large advantage.
The expectation is very high, as is the hope that thanks to the new rules established for the occasion, the duel will go smoothly without all the interruptions and chaos that have characterized the challenge of last September 29th. We recall that there should have been three debates, but that of October 15 was canceled because on October 2 the US president contracted the coronavirus together with his wife Melania.
Here then everything you need to know about tonight's debate between Trump and Biden.
TRUMP-BIDEN DEBATE: GENERAL INDICATIONS
The debate will be held tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The scheduled start time is 20pm in the US, 3am in Italy. It will last a total of 90 minutes and will be moderated by Keisten Welker, the leading face of the nbc, which the tenant of the White House has already attacked, calling it "extraordinarily partisan".
TRUMP-BIDEN DEBATE: THE NEW RULES
The commission that regulates TV debates has established new rules to avoid the chaos seen in the duel three weeks ago, when Trump interrupted Biden 71 times and the Democratic candidate returned the favor 21 times. The result was to give life to a chaotic and at times incomprehensible confrontation for the spectators, with lots of attacks and insults and little (very little) content.
To try to remedy the situation and curb the excesses of the candidates, Trump in the first place, it was decided to turn off the microphone of the rival candidate while the other is speaking in the two minutes reserved for him at the beginning of each of the six segments of 15 minutes of discussion. At the end of the two minutes each without interruption, the microphone will be turned back on and the two candidates will be able to converse freely. A rule that the American president and his electoral staff did not like at all, according to which it would have been created and following the best practices to favor sleepy joe, nickname that Trump gave to Biden.
TRUMP-BIDEN DEBATE: THE TOPICS CHOSEN
There are six issues that Trump and Biden will be called upon to address tonight: the pandemic, American families, the racial issue, climate change, national security and leadership. Foreign policy excluded, at least in theory, which however will surely be able to peek into the duel due to the latest news published in the newspapers concerning both challengers.
TRUMP-BIDEN DEBATE: THE HOT TOPICS
Officially, as mentioned, they shouldn't find space in the confrontation, but in all likelihood among the main battlegrounds tonight there will be two news items published over the last few days on Trump and Biden respectively by New York Times and from New York Post.
Let's start with the latter. The American tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch has published on its front page a much discussed and controversial story about Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic presidential candidate. The article accuses Hunter of organizing in 2015 - when his father was vice president - a meeting between Biden and a director of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. The event has already been denied by the former vice president's staff. According to New York Post this "scoop" would be proof that Joe Biden intervened in Ukrainian politics in order to favor his son's business. However, the revelations of the New York newspaper are based on very uncertain sources: the news would even come from an email contained in a laptop brought to a shop for repair (it is not known by whom) and never taken back by the rightful owners. On this computer the shopkeeper would have found incriminating material, subsequently handing it over to Robert Costello, lawyer of Rudy Giuliani (former mayor of New York and adviser to the US President). Not only that, to disclose the existence of this information to New York Post it would have been Steve Bannon, Trump's former political strategist who is also well known in Italy, arrested a few months ago for fraud and money laundering.
The article is based on sources and arguments that are very difficult to confirm and for this reason it is considered not very credible by analysts while Facebook and Twitter have decided to block its diffusion. However, the news was immediately picked up by Trump and many members of the Republican party.
On the other side of the fence is a news story published on October 21st New York Times in the context of the US president's tax inquiry that has already caused Trump a lot of embarrassment. According to the newspaper, the tenant of the White House has a current account in China and between 2013 and 2015 paid taxes to the Beijing government of 188.561 dollars. Where is the problem? In the same years Trump paid only a few hundred dollars to the American tax authorities due to the economic difficulties in which his companies find themselves. Not only that, a few days ago the president attacked Biden, claiming that his son Hunter would have opened a bank account with a Chinese businessman, which according to the Republicans would prove that Biden is in cahoots with the "Asian enemy". Now that it has emerged that Trump also has an account in China, the tables may have turned.
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THE SURVEYS
Two weeks after the vote, major national polls say Biden is more than 10 points ahead of Trump. But, as the experience of Hillary Clinton in 2016 teaches, it is above all the votes of the individual states that count. In this case, Biden's advantage would be narrower, but still sufficient to make him exceed the threshold of 270 electors (out of 538) needed to bring him to the White House. To keep an eye on, in addition to the traditional states in the balance (Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Iowa), also Texas - a traditionally Republican state where, however, Biden would have a slight advantage - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.
According to polls, Biden would be ahead in all the territories mentioned above, but the gap between the two candidates in many of these states is not yet wide enough to let him sleep peacefully. Trump therefore hopes to be able to recover also thanks to the debate scheduled for tonight. Reason why he will not miss an opportunity to attack his rival on every possible front.
