Recap of town halls with Trump & Biden and top news briefs
It is Friday, October 16. Here are today’s top news briefs.
Here is a recap of Thursday night’s town halls with President Trump on NBC and Joe Biden on ABC. We’ll start with Trump.
Trump said he did not have any regrets about hosting events at the White House that is tied to the outbreak of coronavirus that ultimately infected him. He said he is feeling great now and that there is a lot of testing at the White House and that he can’t always be in a room because he is the president, he has to see people.
Trump made it clear that he denounces white supremacy. He was asked if he would disavow QAnon. Trump said he knows nothing about QAnon.
Trump said he was concerned about news reports of ballots with his name on it being dumped in the trash and questioned whether the election would have accurate results.
Trump was asked what his plan is to make healthcare affordable. He said he was proud to remove the individual mandate from Obamacare and he wants to terminate Obamacare.
Trump said it is a good thing that he reduced corporate taxes because it has led to companies coming back to the U.S. and simulated job creation.
Trump said his personal debt of $400 million is a tiny percentage of his net worth and real estate ownership.
Trump said he has done more for African-Americans than any other president with the exception of Abraham Lincoln.
One questioner named Paulette Dale said Trump is so handsome when he smiles. He smiled.
Trump made a closing message that Americans should vote for him because he has done a great job, has created a strong economy, and rebuilt our military and borders.
Now, here’s the Biden recap.
Biden criticized Trump for not bringing together Republicans and Democrats in Congress together to address the coronavirus crisis.
Biden said Trump made fun of him for wearing a mask and that influences people to think that wearing a mask is not important.
Biden said more than half of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cuts went to the top 1 percent earners. He said his plan is to increase taxes to people earning more than $400,000 a year.
Biden said he wanted to see police become more of a community policing force where there are two officers per patrol vehicle and for them to introduce themselves and exchange numbers with business owners and for police officers to shoot at people in the legs instead of shooting to kill. He said he doesn’t support defunding the police and said they need more mental health professionals to support them.
Biden said he is not a fan of court packing (adding Supreme Court justices beyond the customary nine), but he is open to doing that if the Senate confirms a new justice before the election.
Biden said he doesn’t hold grudges against others in the way that Trump does. He said he believes that if Trump goes away, he can get four to eight Republican senators to support Democratic proposals in a bipartisan way.
Biden said he wants to invest vast amounts of money into renewable energy and create millions of new jobs. He said he is not against fracking.
Biden said he would eliminate Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
Biden said if he loses the election, he would go back to being a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
That’s the recaps. Trump and Biden are scheduled to debate on October 22, which is next Thursday.
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PBS reported that more than 17 million people have already voted in the 2020 election, which is a record amount of early votes. Registered Democrats are voting at twice the rate of registered Republicans.
The Trump administration has rejected California’s request for disaster relief aid for wildfires that hit the state last month, according to the New York Times.
UPDATE: President Trump approved the aid as of this afternoon.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he had to be in the hospital’s ICU for a week after he became infected with Covid-19. He is out of the hospital now and appears to be recovering.
The U.S. has surpassed 8 million Covid-19 cases and is still the worst-affected country in the world. 218,000 people have died in the U.S. A total of 1.1 million have died worldwide.
That is all the top news briefs for this week. Check out our Deaf News and Election 2020 videos. Have a great weekend and stay with the light.
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-nbc-town-hall-transcript-october-15
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/read-full-transcript-joe-bidens-abc-news-town/story?id=73643517
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/trump-california-wildfire-relief.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-christie-covid-19-icu-7-days/