Morry Gash/AP
President Donald Trump may not have relentlessly interrupted Joe Biden during a discussion of the coronavirus pandemic at Thursday night’s debate, but he continued spewing lies just the same.
Coronavirus case counts in the United States are spiking for a third time, and scientists don’t expect the virus to fizzle out in the near future. Yet Trump, who contracted the coronavirus shortly after the first debate, repeated a familiar refrain: “It will go away.”
“We’re rounding the turn,” he said. “We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away.”
In terms of policy, Biden stressed national standards for reopening in-person schooling, financial support for struggling businesses, and an expanded rapid-testing system. Trump suggested “learning to live with it.”
But Biden—who during his life has lost a wife and two children—focused on the human toll of Trump’s failures.
“He says we’re learning to live with it,” Biden said. “People are learning to die with it.”
“You folks home who have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning, that man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their—out of habit—where their wife or husband was, is gone,” he said. “Learning to live with it? Come on. We’re dying with it.”
Pressed about his response to COVID-19, Trump responded, “We’re learning to live with it."
“People are learning to die with it,” @JoeBiden responded. “Folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning… Learning to live with it? C’mon, we’re dying with it.” pic.twitter.com/7AM2IWeJER
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 23, 2020
