WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd October, 2020) US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden during their final debate sparred over the pandemic, foreign election meddling, North Korea nuclear talks, racism, and climate change, among other issues, just hours after a new bombshell was dropped about Hunter Biden's business dealings, this time from a former associate.
Trump and Biden took the stage in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday evening in their final debate with twelve days left until the election as the polls continue to tighten in key battleground states. The candidates opened the evening sparring over the Trump administration's response to the pandemic before trading allegations about ties to foreign powers such as China, Russia and Iran. Biden said if he is elected Iran and Russia will "pay a price" for alleged meddling.
When the topic moved to North Korea, Trump said there was a possibility of nuclear war and that millions of people would have been dead if not for him. Biden said he would negotiate with Kim Jong Un if North Korea reduced its nuclear capabilities. The candidates traded more insults over the Russia probe and the Ukraine scandals. Biden claimed the information regarding the Hunter Biden affair was part of a Russian plan, prompting Trump to say "Russia, Russia, Russia, again."
The debate rules had changed, as the moderator was allowed to cut-off microphones given the candidates interrupted each other repeatedly in the previous debate.
Former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski told reporters that he will meet with members of a Senate committee on Friday to brief them on matters involving Biden's business dealings overseas and to provide the FBI with alleged evidence as well.
"Tomorrow I will be meeting with the Senate committee members concerning this matter. And I will be providing the FBI the devices which contain the evidence corroborating what I have said, so I will not be taking any questions at this time," Bobulinski said on Thursday as quoted by a White House press pool report.
Bobulinski visited Nashville, Tennessee as a guest in the final presidential debate. Hunter Biden and another business associate had brought Bobulinski to be a CEO of Sinohawk Holdings. Bobulinkski accuses the Bidens of having corrupt business dealings in China. The Bidens have rejected all allegations of wrongdoing.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is maintaining his steady 10 percent national lead over President Donald Trump with less than two weeks to go to the US elections on November 3, Quinnipiac University Polls said in a press release on Thursday.
Likely voters support Biden over Trump 51-41% in the national survey, the third since September that shows the former vice president ahead by ten points, the pollster said.
Biden is ahead by an average of 8 percent nationally in the most recent eleven surveys posted on poll aggregator Realclearpolitics.com (RCP). Meanwhile, Trump is behind in polling in 8 of the top 12 battleground states, but nearly all within a typical margin of error.
More than 47 million Americans have cast early votes in the 2020 presidential election, outpacing 2016 by a factor of eight, the US Elections Project reported.
About 70% percent of the 47.5 million early votes were cast using mail-in ballots versus in-person, the report said on Thursday.
The total grew by 6 million votes from the previous day. This single-day total equals the total number of early votes that had been filed at this point in 2016 (about 5.9 million).
Russian President Vladimir Putin understands that the closer the presidential elections in the United States, the angrier the Russophobic rhetoric becomes there, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday.
"The president is well aware that the fewer days left before the US presidential election, the angrier the rhetoric becomes in terms of its Russophobia," Peskov told Russia's Channel One.
The Kremlin spokesperson added that Russia would work with any US president and had no favorite candidate.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned in a joint advisory on Thursday that Russian hackers are trying to breach dozens of state and local government networks.
"This joint cybersecurity advisory - written by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - provides information on Russian state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor activity targeting various US state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) government networks, as well as aviation networks," the advisory said.
To date, the FBI and CISA have no information to indicate this advanced persistent threat actor has intentionally disrupted any aviation, education, elections or government operations.
