US presidential debate: Trump and Biden accuses each other

Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden held their final debate in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday evening, with less than two weeks to go before the Nov. 3 presidential election. The debate opened with a clash over the president’s handling of the pandemic, which polling suggests is the campaign’s defining issue for voters, with Biden declaring, “Anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain president of the United States of America.”

Trump defended his management of the nation’s most deadly health crisis in a century, dismissing Biden’s warning that the nation had a “dark winter ahead” due to spikes in infections. And he promised that a vaccine would be ready in weeks.“It will go away,” said Trump, staying with his optimistic assessment of the pandemic. “We’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away,” news agency AP quoted Trump as saying. Trump further argued for opening the country, saying, “We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy. There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody’s ever seen before. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”

But Biden vowed that his administration would defer to the scientists and said that Trump’s divisive approach hindered the nation’s response.“I don’t look at this in the way he does--blue states and red states,” Biden said. “They’re all the United States. And look at all the states that are having a spike in he coronavirus--they’re the red states," said Biden, referring to Trump's tax  former vice president Biden challenged the president to release his returns.records, Biden noted that he has released his tax returns going back 22 years and asked Donald Trump, "What are you hiding?

Donald Trump  described the air in India, China and Russia as "filthy" as he defended his decision to withdrew from the Paris climate accord, which, he said, would have made America a non-competitive nation. "I will not sacrifice millions of jobs... thousands of companies because of the Paris Accord. It is very unfair," he said at the televised debate in which the two candidates avoided shaking hands due to safety risks.