Trump and Biden Spar From Afar at City Halls

President Trump spoke positively about an extremist conspiracy-theory group, expressed skepticism about mask-wearing, rebuked his personal F.B.I. director and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a televised city corridor discussion board on Thursday, veering away from a targeted marketing campaign enchantment. As an alternative, he additional stoked the nation’s political rifts as his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., pushed a deliberate message anchored in issues over public well being.

Mr. Trump’s defensive efficiency got here on an evening that was presupposed to characteristic a debate between him and Mr. Biden, however that morphed right into a long-distance research in contrasts on completely different tv networks after the president declined to take part in a digital debate.

On the central problem of the election, the coronavirus pandemic, the 2 candidates appeared to inhabit not simply completely different tv units however completely different universes. Mr. Biden has made the total embrace of strict public well being pointers the centerpiece of his candidacy, whereas Mr. Trump has continued to defy even the suggestions of his personal authorities on issues as primary as the usage of masks — a sample that endured of their opposing occasions on Thursday.

In maybe his most incendiary remarks, Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon, a pro-Trump web neighborhood that has been described by legislation enforcement as a possible home terrorism menace. The president professed to haven’t any information of the group, and in consequence couldn’t disavow it, however then demonstrated particular information of considered one of its core conspiracy theories involving pedophilia that’s totally false.

“I do know nothing about it,” Mr. Trump mentioned. “I do know they’re very a lot in opposition to pedophilia. They struggle it very arduous.”

When the NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie pressed Mr. Trump to reject the neighborhood’s important worldview, and described a few of its most excessive and bogus components, the president gave no floor: “I don’t know,” he insisted. “No, I don’t know.”

In the mean time that Mr. Trump was successfully defending a fringe nook of the web, Mr. Biden, the previous vice chairman, was talking about company tax charges and citing the business-analysis service Moody’s, underscoring the extraordinary gulf separating the 2 candidates of their worldviews, insurance policies and connections to factual actuality.

“It’s about rising the economic system,” Mr. Biden mentioned, a political platitude that would slot in any peculiar election yr — and an illustration, in some methods, of Mr. Biden’s central marketing campaign promise: to revive stability and a measure of predictability to the White Home.

With lower than three weeks left within the presidential marketing campaign, there was no signal from the city corridor occasions that both candidate was diverging from the political tracks they laid down months in the past, with Mr. Biden hewing near a set of broadly fashionable views on financial and public well being points and Mr. Trump improvising freely, admitting no fault in his personal file and hurling varied types of incendiary provocation.

Certainly, their opposing shows appeared that, had the 2 males been onstage collectively on Thursday night, it might need unfolded very like their earlier debate, which noticed Mr. Trump hectoring and interrupting Mr. Biden for many of an hour and a half.

Mr. Biden, seated in a chair on the Nationwide Structure Heart in Philadelphia, sought to attach with the voters sprinkled all through a principally empty auditorium by making fixed references to his plans to confront the most important challenges dealing with the nation, together with the coronavirus and college and enterprise reopenings. He concluded a lot of his prolonged responses by expressing hope that he had answered the voters’ questions.

Mr. Trump, against this, repeatedly flashed impatience with Ms. Guthrie’s persistent questioning, sounding particularly exasperated when she requested him to sentence white supremacy (“I denounce white supremacy, OK?” he replied.) When Ms. Guthrie requested him repeatedly for particular details about his current medical issues, the president largely resorted to generalities and declined to say if he had taken a coronavirus take a look at on the day of his first debate with Mr. Biden.

“I in all probability did, and I took a take a look at the day earlier than and the day earlier than,” Mr. Trump mentioned, including: “Presumably I did. Presumably I didn’t.”

Requested a couple of current New York Instances investigation that exposed he had paid minimal or no revenue taxes for years, Mr. Trump attacked the reporting and claimed falsely that it was “unlawful.” He denied owing any cash to Russians and briefly appeared to vow Ms. Guthrie he would “let you recognize who I owe” cash to, however his verbiage was not totally clear, and at one level he delivered a form of miniature filibuster by itemizing varied properties he owns.

In his look, Mr. Biden additionally confronted quite a few points which were difficult for him to deal with all through the marketing campaign, together with his views on increasing the Supreme Court docket and his file on the 1994 crime invoice. Below questioning he indicated that he would make clear his place on increasing the Supreme Court docket earlier than Election Day. And he additionally appeared to briefly acknowledge that it was a mistake to help the crime invoice, a measure through which he performed a central function, although he went on to instantly counsel the perceived drawback got here in how the states applied it.

“Sure it was,” he mentioned, when requested if it was a mistake to help it. “However right here’s the place the error got here: The error got here by way of what the states did domestically.”

There was just about no overlap in how Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden addressed the topic of the coronavirus.

Mr. Biden, for his half, lashed just about each side of the president’s dealing with of the well being disaster, together with his language on masks.

“The phrases of a president matter,” Mr. Biden mentioned. “When a president doesn’t put on a masks or makes enjoyable of oldsters like me once I was sporting a masks for a very long time, then, you recognize, individuals say, ‘Effectively, it mustn’t be that vital.’”

The previous vice chairman famous his personal consultations with medical consultants and emphasised his deference to scientific judgment on confronting the virus and trusting a possible vaccine, whereas jabbing a few of Mr. Trump’s extra outlandish commentary on the virus, comparable to his suggestion that ingesting disinfectant might assist with the virus.

“Loopy stuff,” Mr. Biden mentioned. “I’m not being facetious, although, I imply he really mentioned these items.”

Even because the illness continues to tear by the nation, Mr. Trump insisted that the US was “rounding the nook” in its bout with the pandemic and urged individuals to “use the phrase treatment” in reference to rising therapies to deal with the virus, regardless that no therapy has emerged that meets that description.

The president once more criticized state leaders for ordering lockdowns and singled out Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who was just lately the goal of a kidnapping plot by anti-government militants, for private assault. And regardless of briefly expressing help for mask-wearing, Mr. Trump shortly equivocated.

“On the masks, you have got two tales,” Mr. Trump mentioned, claiming falsely that most individuals who put on masks contract the virus.

Maybe notably, Mr. Trump mentioned he would decide to a peaceable switch of energy after the election — a promise he declined to make within the first debate — although he shortly added the qualification that he would insist on an “trustworthy election” and raised unsubstantiated theories about voter fraud. When Ms. Guthrie identified that the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, had mentioned there was no signal of such widespread voter misconduct, the president shot again, “Then he’s not doing an excellent job.”

The bizarre split-screen spectacle happened, like a lot else within the 2020 marketing campaign, because of the coronavirus pandemic and Mr. Trump’s resistance to following the general public well being pointers outlined by scientists and medical consultants in his personal administration. After the president examined optimistic for the coronavirus this month, the Fee on Presidential Debates introduced that the second scheduled encounter between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden would happen just about, for security causes. Mr. Trump refused to take part in such an occasion, resulting in its cancellation.

However the president appeared to have second ideas about scrapping considered one of only some remaining alternatives to current a side-by-side distinction with a challenger who’s properly forward within the polls. Mr. Trump and his marketing campaign demanded that the fee revive the talk, as an in-person occasion, and when that plea yielded no outcomes the president scheduled a city corridor discussion board with NBC to compete with one Mr. Biden had already organized on a unique community.

Mr. Biden had much less to lose from a comparatively muted night, since he’s constantly forward of Mr. Trump in nationwide and swing-state polls whereas tens of millions of Individuals are already casting their ballots by early and mail-in balloting.

The dueling city corridor occasions got here amid Mr. Trump’s first week again on the marketing campaign path after his three-night hospitalization in early October and his restoration the following week. The president has been decided to return to campaigning as standard regardless of the obvious severity of the well being points he confronted, conscious that point is working brief and maybe desirous to dispel any notion amongst voters that he could be bodily frail.

In his marketing campaign occasions to date, Mr. Trump has appeared neither frail nor conscious of the pandemic as a basic matter. His marketing campaign has not enforced a coverage of mask-wearing or social distancing, resulting in packed occasions at airport hangars in states like Iowa and Florida which are confronting rising case counts. The president has continued to foretell that the virus will quickly disappear, regardless of mountains of proof on the contrary.

The Biden marketing campaign, already framing the race as a referendum on Mr. Trump’s dealing with of the general public well being disaster, has accentuated the distinction between Mr. Trump’s indifference to well being pointers and the previous vice chairman’s extra cautious method.

Mr. Biden, who served for many years as a U.S. senator from Delaware and has robust institutionalist instincts, has beforehand expressed robust opposition to increasing the Supreme Court docket. However in current weeks, as Republicans have rushed right into a Supreme Court docket affirmation course of even with voting underway, Mr. Biden has repeatedly dodged questions on the problem of court docket packing, insisting that his focus is as a substitute on potential judicial threats to the Reasonably priced Care Act and at occasions responding brusquely when pressed on the problem.

On Thursday, although, below repeated questioning from the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, Mr. Biden appeared to decide to clarifying his place earlier than Election Day.

“You’ll come out with a transparent place earlier than Election Day?” the moderator pressed.

“Sure, relying on how they deal with this,” Mr. Biden mentioned whereas discussing the nomination means of Decide Amy Coney Barrett. He additionally repeated his view that he has “not been a fan of court docket packing.”