Washington-President Donald Trump gave a combative, at times agitated defense of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic Thursday while his election challenger Joe Biden, appearing in a simultaneous television town hall on another network, accused him of having done “nothing.”
“We’re rounding the corner,” Trump said with his usual optimism, even as swaths of the United States see sharply rising caseloads.
But pressed by the host of the NBC town hall in Miami, he became quickly frustrated, especially when he was asked about his lukewarm denunciations of extremist right wing groups in the United States.
He refused to denounce QAnon, a conspiracy theory movement that believes Trump is fighting a “deep state” linked to a mysterious global elite running the world’s governments, while also trafficking in child sex.
Trump said “I know nothing about QAnon,” and then continued to say that he liked the shadowy group’s position being “very much against pedophilia.”
By contrast, Biden’s appearance on the rival ABC news network was lower key, emphasizing direct conversations with audience members in the town hall format held in Philadelphia.