President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are facing off Thursday night in Nashville, Tennessee, for the second presidential debate.
The 90-minute event got underway at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can watch the debate live on this page.
Our VERIFY researchers are working to fact-check the claims and statements both nominees are making in real-time. Refresh this story for updates.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Biden is leading most national polls and has a narrower advantage in the battleground states that could decide the race. More than 47 million people have already cast their ballots. The debate, moderated by NBC's Kristen Welker, is a final chance for both men to make their case to a television audience of tens of millions of voters.
After Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, the Commission on Presidential Debates ruled that the second debate, which was supposed to have been held last week, would be virtual. Trump balked, leading to the cancellation of the debate and the two men holding dueling town halls last Thursday night instead, speaking at the same time more than 1,000 miles apart.
On Thursday night, in an effort to curtail interruptions, Trump and Biden each had his microphone cut off while his rival delivered an opening two-minute answer to each of the six debate topics, the commission announced. The mute button won’t figure in the open discussion portion of the debate, but has drawn criticism from Trump.
CLAIM: Biden said, "The expectation is we'll have another 200,000 Americans dead in the time between now and the end of the year."
This claim is false.
This is based on outdated estimates from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics.
In early September, its projection was 410,451 U.S. coronavirus deaths by Jan. 1, 2021. As of the night of the debate, October 22, 2020, its estimate is 316,935 U.S. coronavirus deaths by Jan. 1, 2021.
There were 222,977 U.S. deaths from coronavirus as of the night of the debate, according to Johns Hopkins University, so there would be an additional 94,000 deaths by the start of 2021 under the current estimate, not 200,000.
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