Be on tonight. They talked at the same time on opposing networks. Again, tonight the contrast was stark. Trump and biden took questions from voters just hours after the u. S. Passed 8 million coronavirus cases, a number just shy of the population of new york city. Over 218,000 souls now gone. Whats gotten a bit lost is were now in the third spike of infections. 37 states plus guam, washington, d. C. Seeing double digit increases in cases. Its become the defining issue of this election. Mass death has a way of focusing the mind and the voters. And it was a big focus at tonights dueling townhalls. Mr. President , if you knew covid19 as you told bob woodward in february as what . As you told bob woodward in february was airborne and deadlier than the flu, why did you only put in place a travel ban from china and not put in place other measures . I put on a travel ban far earlier than dr. Fauci thought it was necessary, who i like. Far earlier than the scientists. I was actually the only one that wanted to put it on. Dr. Fauci said i saved thousands and thousands of lives. I was early. I was extremely early when i put on the travel ban. Has your opinion changed on the importance of mask wearing . No, because i was okay with the masks. But as far as the mask is concerned, im good with masks. Im okay with masks. I tell people wear masks. Our deaths per capita is among the highest on the excess mortality. And what weve done has been amazing, and we have done an amazing job. And its rounding the corner. Bidens response was predictably very different. We should be talking about depending on the continuation of the spread of the virus its estimated by every major study done from the university of washington to columbia that if in fact we wore masks we could save between now and the end of the year, 100,000 lives. The words of a president matter. Absolutely. No matter whether theyre good, bad or indifferent they matter. And when a president doesnt wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when i was wearing a mask for a long time then people say, well, it mustnt be that important. Trump was also asked about his last negative coronavirus test, and his answers raised further questions tonight. Your first positive test was thursday, october 1st, okay . When was your last negative test . When did you last remember having a negative test . Well, i test quite a bit. And i can tell you that before the debate, which i thought it was a very good detate and i felt fantastically did you test the day of the debate . I dont know. You say you dont know if you got a test on the dday of the debate . Again, the doctors do it. I dont ask them. The debate that was supposed to take place tonight was cancelled when trump fresh off the coronavirus, after all, refused to appear in a virtual format. The final debate if it happens still scheduled for a week from tonight. Joe biden set to head to the battleground state of michigan tomorrow. Today we learned one person on his charter aircraft crew tested positive for covid. Biden has since tested negative. His running mate senator Kamala Harris has stopped all travel through the weekend. She had her own scare. Her Communications Director and her planes flight crew tested positive. Harris herself has tested negative. As all this was unfolding and on another front as they say, russia is back in the campaign. As the Washington Post reports that u. S. Intelligence agencies warned the white house last year that President Trumps personal lawyer and long time friend Rudy Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by russian intelligence. And nbc news reports the feds are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by joe biden and his son hunter and found on a laptop that happened to be at a delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation. A lot to discuss. Lets bring in our three returning veterans on this busy thursday night. Aaron heinz, editor at large for the 19th, nonprofit nonpartisan newsroom focused on gender politics and policy. Phil rucker, coauthor along with his colleague at the post Carol Leonnig of the long time bestseller a very stable genius about you know who. And his colleague, eugene robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist also at the Washington Post. Good evening and welcome to you all. Erin, you get to go first with this question, perhaps unanswerable. Do you think any minds, any votes were changed at the end of tonight for those lucky few americans who have two flat screens hanging on the wall in their den . Well, brian, that is an open question. And i certainly have whiplash from trying to keep up with tonights dueling town halls. Look, this was supposed to be a town hall with both then on the stage and that is disappointing that didnt happen because the voters being able to engage with these candidates is really a different dynamic, and we saw their two very contrasting styles and messages on full display tonight. Its really just too bad voters didnt get to see that with them sharing a stage. There are maybe a slither of undecided voters right now. I think really the undecided issue is whether people are going to vote or not but i dont think its who theyre going to vote for. So i think people kind of hunkered down in their camps tonight and either tuned into joe biden if they were already voting for him or donald trump if they were already voting for him. Eugene, i want to play a brief sampling of some more of joe biden over at the abc news town hall. Well discuss on the other side. We shouldnt be defunding cops. We should be mandating the things that we should be doing within Police Departments and make sure theres total transparency. You are open to expanding the court . Im open to considering what happens from that point on. So youll come out with a clear position before election day . Yes, depending on how they handle this. If you lose what will that say to you about where america is today . Well, it could say im a lou zi candidate and i didnt do a good job. I hope that it doesnt say that we are as racially, ethically and religiously at odds with one another as it appears the president wants us to be. Well, eugene, folks cant say they dont have a clear choice or a stark difference in styles between these two guys. Lets look at where the race is. Our friends over at npr have put together whats called in the business the kind of poll of polls. And when you cram all the math together, the race looks right now, subject to change, 5442. Eugene, i think consensus was the president did better tonight, though, he was angrier tonight, he was also up against a professional litigator turned Television Host in our mutual friend Savannah Guthrie who was all lawyer tonight as she tried to drill down, correct and get in. So same question to you as i asked erin. Do you think as much as a single vote was changed among people watching . I dont think there were a whole lot of votes out there that can be changed at this point, brian, but to the extent that there were you know, the difficulty tonight obviously was it was very difficult to watch both at the same time. I actually did it on a flat screen and on a laptop, and i have a headache. It was difficult to do. But even, you know, in that sort of schizophrenic way of experiencing these two town halls, you saw the huge gulf in tone and just the difference between these two men two incredible meaningful moments, one was when a voter asked biden what would he do to make the country better if you lost, if he didnt win. And he went onto give a long and kind of i thought pretty thoughtful answer about how he would try to instill the values of the nation as he understands them and their students and so on. And at the end of the nbc town hall savannah lobbed kind of a rare softball at donald trump and said President Trump, what do you say to voters who might not have supported you, that you essentially do better next time if youre given four more years. And trumps response was, i think ive done a great job. And that kind of tells you a lot about the two men and how they differ. And i think, you know, it was a stark contrast. Yeah, theres the Bumper Sticker for you. So mr. Rucker, about your newspaper, lets put the headline back up on the screen. Its not every day where you see a headline like former new york city mayor, president s personal lawyer and longtime friend, white house was warned that rudy was the target of russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to trump. A, successful misinformation fed, b, rudy was rewarded with continuing to hang in the president s circle, rewarded with a speaking role at the virtual gop convention. He was back on fox news in prime time like nothing at all happened. Is this just a thursday following the death of outrage in 2020 . It is just thursday. And you left out one detail about Rudy Giulianis year 2020. Hes in the room helping prepare President Trump for his debates. Hes the debate coach. And look, my colleagues at the post reported tonight a pretty explosive story which is that u. S. Intelligence agencies believed that Rudy Giuliani was being worked over by russian intelligence assets as a conduit to feed misinformation to the president of the United States. They were smart enough to know that giuliani had a direct personal channel to the president. Giuliani, as we all know, spent considerable time the last few years in ukraine and with ukrainian contacts to try to dig up dirt and information about hunter biden, Vice President bidens son. And, you know, apparently according to u. S. Intelligence, the russians were onto him and were using giulianis interest in ukraine to feed him misinformation, to get to the president and try to influence the american political process. And thats a big deal. You know, we should not underscore or we should underscore, rather, how significant that development is. I know weve heard a lot about russia the last 4 years, but this is highly unusual. Erin, back over to you. You have written that racism is on the ballot this year. And to that end i want to play an exchange between our friend savannah and the president. Well discuss on the other side. Are you listening . I didnt ask White Supremacy. Here we go again. Every time, in fact my people came im sure theyll ask you the White Supremacy question. I denounce White Supremacy. And frankly you want to know something, i denounce antifa. So erin, you saw the president burdened by the question reluctantly giving the answer as suggested, and then at the end a little bit of what aboutism to get himself out of that and asking about antifa. I am guessing that falls short of what you and so many of your readers might want to hear some day. Well, brian, he seemed to be annoyed by the question and annoyed by savannah continuing to press him on that. And frankly, had he answered that question in the first debate, which seems like a million years ago now, but had he answered that question perhaps that wouldnt have been at issue tonight and he could have talked about some of the other things that maybe he wanted to focus on. And yes, continuing to bring antifa up when, you know, his own federal Law Enforcement agencies have said that White Supremacy is the greatest domestic terrorism threat that this country faces does fly in the face of the realities of what his own experts have tried to tell him and tried to warn the country about. And coming in the wake of, you know, the plot against the alleged plot against michigan Governor Whitmer and Virginia Governor northam, i think that it is a question that is worth asking and that the American People should expect an answer for. Contrast that to, you know, issues of race that came up for Vice President biden tonight. He said that he made a mistake on the 1994 crime bill, was calling for police reforms, was calling for the need for racial healing and unity in this country. And so, again, a much more substantive pair of conversations. Its just too bad they were happening about 1,200 miles apart. Eugene, in the midst of all this tonight we read Chris Christie is indeed diseasefree. He a couple of days ago got out of the hospital, and he wrote this as part of a longer and quite thoughtful statement. I believe that when i entered the white house grounds that i had entered a safe zone due to the testing that i and many others underwent every day. I was wrong. Having had the virus i can also assure those who have not had it of a few things. Its something to take very seriously. He also mentioned he was wrong not to wear a mask. Look, this a guy with comorbidities. Hes been very forthright and public about his struggle with weight. He also has had asthma all his life. We are happy hes out, happy hes better, but if the president spoke with that kind of candor and forthrightness and pivoted as a covid veteran now to teach kind of lessons learned. Hes gone the other way. Thats exactly the point, brian. We learned for the first time at least i learned for the first time that Chris Christie had been in the intensive care unit of the hospital for nearly a weak. This is very serious, and fortunately, he seems to be fine now or recovering now. Of course, we dont, again, know all the longterm implications of having had covid. And so this is something the president could have done. The president of the United States got this disease and went through it, and he could have used that experience to educate the American People and to warn them. And he could have modelled the kind of behavior that would keep other people well, other people falling ill with covid like mask wearing and social distancing, and the president did none of that. He did the exact opposite. He makes light of it. He says, i conquered it, im now immune. And again, this was this was an incredible contrast. Chris christie showed us what could have been but what was not. Hey phil rucker, hear now a word from ben sass, republican senator from nebraska. Discussion to follow. The way he kisses dictators. The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor, and the ways i criticized president obama for that kind of spending i criticize President Trump as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. Hes flirted with white supremacists. At the beginning of the covid crisis he refused to treat it seriously. Im now looking at the possibility of a republican bloodbath in the senate. So, phil, so begins the great migration, the great walkback of 2020 2021. If republicans lose control of the senate, if donald trump is defeated will every republican senator including mr. Portman from ohio, whos welcome on this broadcast any night, will they all sound some version of mr. Sasse who i remind our audience has a degree from harvard, studied at oxford, phd from mr. Ruckers alma mater, yale. So he knows he knows the name of the game here. He knows exactly what hes doing. He does, brian. You know, if trump were to lose this election and republicans entered a period of soulsearching and regrowth, rebuilding their party i think youre going to see a number of republican elected officials, especially those with president ial aspirations distance themselves the way senator sasse has. We should point out that senator sasse has been outspoken about the president at various moments before especially during the 2016 campaign. Certainly not on the scale of a mitt romney, but hes also not one of these trump sycophants in the senate. He has broken with the president from time to time. I suspect were going to see a few others echo what sasse said in november, december, january should President Trump end up losing, in part because these are people to be the standard bearers of the posttrump republican party. Sasse is a relatively young guy. He certainly could be in the mix for a president ial campaign along with others. Tom cotton, again, marco rubio, ted cruz. There are tons of republicans who have a future after trump, and theyre going to all be navigating what to say about these next four years should trump lose. What appears to be the start of the great migration. This is going to be interesting to watch. Errin haines, phil rucker, eugene robinson. Coming up, with over 8 million cases of the virus here in our country, well ask an er doctor what the candidates got right, what they got wrong at tonights events and later bob woodward will join us with exclusive new audio from his conversations with donald trump. The 11th hour just getting underway on this thursday evening. Y evening. Our nation has never had a more dangerous and corrupt president than trump. Hes harming our basic values, giving rise to hate, and hes selling out america to big corporations. Im working to protect immigrants, women, communities of color, and lgbtq people. And im making corporations like pg e and Insurance Companies play by our rules. We need experienced leadership to wipe away trumps stain on america for good. Im good with masks, im okay with masks. I tell people to wear masks. Just the other day they came out with a statement that 85 of people that wear masks catch it. Thats what i heard, and thats what i saw. And regardless but everybodys tested, and theyre tested often. That 85 figure is garbage. Its not true. 62,000 new cases of coronavirus recorded just today in our country. Thats our highest daily count since july. So we have that going for us. This graphic of cases shows why. Were entering our third spike of just the first wave of this disease. Its already killed 1 out of every 1,600 americans. Most states are on the way up. Not one state is showing a sustained decline. So with us yet again is dr. Vin gupta, er doc specializing in this kind of thing. Also an affiliate assistant professor with the university of washingtons department of health metric