President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden held dueling town halls Thursday night — forums that took the place of the presidential debate originally scheduled for the same night and which Trump pulled out of when it went to a virtual format.
The decision by NBC to air the event at the same time as Biden’s previously scheduled one on ABC was a source of controversy, but the simultaneous events provided a pretty good window into the contrasting approaches, as a debate would have, even if this was not side by side. Here are the takeaways.
1. Trump’s smorgasbord of misinformation and false choices — deftly called out
A couple of recent Trump interviews have stood out for the interviewers’ rare abilities and efforts to call out Trump in real time — one from Fox News’s Chris Wallace and another from Axios’s Jonathan Swan.