Spotlight on VP debate after Trump's COVID diagnosis
This week’s vice presidential debate has taken on an outsized and perhaps unprecedented significance, as questions about President Donald Trump’s health loom over an election that is less than one month away.
Vice President Mike Pence’s sole face-off against Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat Joe Biden’s running mate, on Wednesday in Salt Lake City comes as the Trump campaign reels from a COVID-19 outbreak that has infected not only the president but several in his inner circle.
With Trump trailing Biden by 10 percentage points nationally, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, the pressure is on Pence to defend Trump’s handling of a 7-month-old health crisis that has killed nearly 210,000 Americans, and to show the public he is ready to step in as president if required.
Harris, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight in recent weeks as Biden ramped up campaign travel, must demonstrate to voters that she, too, could assume the presidency if needed should Biden, who’s 77, win the election.
Harris has panned the administration’s coronavirus response, headed by Pence. She will have to thread the needle between renewing those criticisms without attacking the recovering Trump personally, according to one vice presidential expert.
Pence, who once hosted a radio show while a congressman, and can be a more effective communicator than Trump, who in last week’s unruly debate against Biden struggled to make his case for re-election and often resorted to insults to try to rattle his opponent.
Harris, a former California attorney general and presidential contender, cemented her reputation as a skilled questioner on a national stage at the 2018 hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Coronavirus protocols at Wednesday’s debate include seating Pence and Harris more than 12 feet apart – farther than the 7 feet originally agreed upon… and with a plexiglass barrier possibly separating the two.
