They displayed their differences and their open opposition, but from a distance and without speaking to each other.
The two US presidential candidates on November 3, Republican and incumbent Donald Trump as well as former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, were questioned at the same time overnight from Thursday to Friday, Paris time.
These simultaneous interviews replaced a debate that could not be held, in particular for lack of agreement due to the recent contamination of Trump with Covid-19.
They did not directly dialogue but responded from a distance, sometimes firmly, in particular on the management of the new coronavirus.
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“We are in a situation where we have over 210,000 dead and what does he do?
Nothing, ”the Democratic candidate said on ABC calmly, posing as a unifier of a divided America.
“We did a fantastic job […].
The vaccines are coming and the treatments are coming, ”said the tenant of the White House on NBC almost at the same time.
Tense, aggressive, annoyed with the questions asked of him in particular on the reasons why he wore so little the mask, Donald Trump refused any mea culpa.
"I am president, I have to see people […] I cannot be locked in a magnificent room somewhere in the White House", he quipped.
Trump does not condemn the QAnon conspiracy movement "against pedophilia"
The Republican president has also refused to explicitly condemn the QAnon conspiracy movement.
"I don't know anything about QAnon", he said before assuring that he agreed with their positions "against pedophilia".
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The contrast was stark with his Democratic opponent, who is racing ahead in the polls and answering questions from the audience in a much calmer register.
Once the show was over, Joe Biden even stayed about thirty minutes more on the set to respond, off the microphone, to the spectators, no doubt aware that the images would be broadcast on the channel.
We must "listen to the other", he confided to a voter who asked him how he planned to restore "courtesy and honor" in American politics.
Biden leads polls in key states
"What I will do, if I'm elected president, first, and I'm not kidding […] I'll call them," Republicans, he said, referring to his reputation when he was a senator, for more than 35 years, as a man capable of crossing partisan barriers.
By evoking the scourges of racism, he presented himself as the opposite of Donald Trump, accusing him of heightening tensions between Americans.
“If I am elected president, you will not hear me […] divide.
I would try to collect.
"
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The former Democratic vice-president leads by nearly ten points in the national average of polls for the presidential election.
But above all, although with a narrower margin, it is the race in the lead in the key States which make the elections in the United States by switching from one party to another.
The outgoing president saying he is "immune" to Covid-19 has been intensifying his campaign since Monday, surrounded every evening by thousands of supporters in red caps in these key states.