Presidential City Halls Tonight: A Complete Explanation

[Follow our live town hall updates for Trump and Biden.]

• President Trump And the Joseph R. Biden Jr. It will appear in a separate, nationally televised Thursday Town Hall Events that begin at 8 PM ET.

• Mr. Trump will take questions from voters in Miami. The City Hall will be broadcast by NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, which will be run by “Today” host Savannah Guthrie. It is expected to last for about an hour.

• ABC will move Biden City Hall, which will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and run by ABC News’ chief broadcaster, George Stephanopoulos. The event is expected to last 90 minutes.

• The New York Times will cover the simultaneous events live, with real-time analysis from teams of reporters seeing both candidates, on nytimes.com.

• Trump and Biden were originally scheduled to hold a debate on Thursday night, but it was canceled after the president withdrew because it was due to be held by default.

Polls show Trump is running late. Will he start looking for a new target to blame?

Federal judge in Pennsylvania last week Threw a lawsuit Through the Trump campaign, which sought to limit how ballot papers are collected and counted in the mail. Facebook and Twitter said on Wednesday they were Reducing distribution From, or simply preventing, a report in The New York Post that made unverified claims about Mr. Biden. The The incentive bill Mr Trump is pushing for him at odds with both sides on Capitol Hill.

With less than three weeks left, Mr. Trump has a set of goals to which he can point as he looks to explain why things are not going his way. He focuses his anger on providing a preview of how he would react to the results on election night, should he lose.

Will Trump, once again, give Biden a screaming gift?

Candidates won’t share a stage, but their competing local councils, which will be held on different networks simultaneously on the same night, could create a similar dynamic to the first general election debate this month.

With a major advance in national polls and battlefield opinion polls, Mr. Biden is only hoping to run out of clock without any outside events altering the course of the race. Mr Trump, whose schedule is filled with as many rallies as possible, is seeking to drown him out with noise.

Will Mr. Trump try to overshadow Biden with his attacks and attacks that have exhausted some of his supporters?

Will Trump try to direct the conversation to Hunter Biden?

The day before the City Council events, Republicans seized the New York Post report about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, which was not supported by evidence to the extent that Twitter and Facebook took an unusual step to limit access to it on their platforms.

The report, pushed by Republican allies of Trump, included Hunter Biden’s work with an energy company in Ukraine and whether he had sought his father’s help – a constant and unfounded source of the president’s distortion against Biden. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president, but Mr Trump has been intent on creating sources of distraction to prevent voters from focusing on his failures in dealing with the coronavirus.

Despite the many questions surrounding the report – and the president’s questions History of influence peddling while in office Mr Trump appears to feel a political opportunity, as he attacked Mr Biden for the report at a rally on Wednesday in Iowa.

If he ignores town hall voters’ questions and returns the conversation to libel, Mr.Trump risks inviting a political reaction among undecided voters for whom Hunter Biden is not a concern at a time of national crisis. This raises the question of whether Mr.Trump has been more explicit in using information of dubious origins to improve his chances in the election than he was four years ago when he publicly called on Russia to find emails from Hillary Clinton’s server.

Biden is on top. Will he make any unintended mistakes?

Time is running out for Mr. Trump to change the direction of the race. So Mr. Biden has a fundamental command in his city council: Don’t make non-coercive mistakes.

For months, Mr. Trump had made baseless claims about Mr. Biden’s stamina and mental acuity, and the Trump campaign was eager to seize on Mr. Biden’s verbal mistakes. Mr. Trump’s repeated warnings about Biden’s fitness have had an effect Lowered expectations for the former vice president In the first debate.

Arguably, Mr. Biden removed the bar simply by staying upright and strong for the duration of the standoff, but Mr. Trump continues to push the message that his opponent has refused. At his gathering on Wednesday, he said Biden was “hit by a bullet” and “lost it.”

Biden thrives through one-on-one interactions with voters, so City Hall offers him better coordination than traditional debate. But Mr. Trump and his allies are sure to deal with any perceived misstep by the Democratic candidate, especially at any moment that can be used as evidence that Mr. Biden has lost a move.

Many voters hate Trump, but can Biden make a positive case for himself?

Much of the 2020 campaign has centered around Mr Trump, and many people are highly motivated to vote in the November elections due to the intense desire to deny him a second term.

But will they be excited about Mr. Biden as well? That’s another question.

In the first debate, Mr. Trump’s ongoing boycotts were not an ideal place for Biden to express his own vision of the country.

City Hall would give him another chance to make a sure case for Biden’s presidency. It is also another opportunity to attract voters who may hate Mr. Trump but were not initially drawn to the Biden nomination, including many young voters who favored other Democrats in the primary.

Mr. Biden is not short on topics to talk about at City Hall. He has laid out an ambitious and far-reaching political agenda, with plans to expand health coverage, combat climate change, narrow the ethnic wealth gap and revive the economy after the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But whether he manages to present those plans in City Hall in a concise and compelling manner, remains to be seen.

Will Biden falter over any policy issues?

Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, were forced to sail A series of difficult political issues And they are trying to attract both progressives and more moderate voters.

One example is the future of the Supreme Court. Amid calls from some Democrats to add seats to the court as a countermeasure if Senate confirms Judge Amy Connie Barrett to replace Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Biden has repeatedly faced questions about whether he supports expanding the court.

Time and time again, Mr. Biden declined an offer of a position, saying it would be a distraction. But it is He said in a local TV interview On Monday he was “not a fan of packing in court.” It is unlikely that this answer will put an end to the questions addressed to him on this topic.

Other politically sensitive topics include issues such as taxes, the Green New Deal, and hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Mr. Trump has tried to portray Mr. Biden as a pawn of the far left of the Democratic Party, despite the former vice president’s reputation as a moderate. Mr. Biden faced the task of keeping his party united while keeping some distance from some proposals that could be used to color him away from the left.

Katie Gluck contributed to the report.