Joe Biden Lays Out COVID-19 Response Plan; Candidates Hit Campaign Trail Following Final Debate.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Which that one, of course, devolved into chaos, with the president's frequent interruptions and attacks. It's unclear whether last night's debate will impact the trajectory of the race, particularly with more than 50 million ballots already cast this election, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins now reports.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After clashing on the debate stage last night, President Trump and Joe Biden back on the campaign trail today with 11 days to go. Before heading to Central Florida to shore up support with seniors, President Trump touted his more restrained debate performance.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think this was better. This is obviously a more popular way of doing it. And, no, I think I wanted to play by the rules, I felt very strongly about it.</s>COLLINS: Meanwhile, in Delaware, Joe Biden continued his criticism of the president's pandemic response.</s>JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We make up 20 percent of all the deaths worldwide. If this is a success, what's a failure look like?</s>COLLINS: Last night, the candidates clashed over Trump's handling of the pandemic right out of the gate, as Trump claimed that he took full responsibility, but then blamed China.</s>TRUMP: I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that it came here. It's China's fault. We're learning to live with it.</s>BIDEN: Number one, he says that we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it.</s>COLLINS: On health care, Trump and Biden offered two different visions for replacing the Affordable Care Act if it's overturned by the Supreme Court.</s>BIDEN: He's never come up with a plan. I guess we're going to get the preexisting condition plan the same time we got the infrastructure plan.</s>TRUMP: So, I'd like to terminate Obamacare, come up with a brand-new, beautiful health care.</s>COLLINS: Biden slammed Trump for his administration's zero tolerance immigration policy that has resulted in lawyers being unable to find the parents of over 500 children who were separated at the border by the federal government.</s>BIDEN: It makes us a laughingstock and violates every notion of who we are as a nation.</s>COLLINS: Trump correctly noted that it was his predecessor who built the systems that immigrant children were housed in, but failed to acknowledge it was his administration's zero tolerance policy that resulted in families being broken apart.</s>TRUMP: Who built the cages, Joe?</s>BIDEN: Let's talk about what we're talking about.</s>TRUMP: Who built the cages?</s>COLLINS: The president hitting Biden after he said he would wind down federal subsidies for the oil industry.</s>BIDEN: I have a transition from the old industry, yes.</s>TRUMP: Oh, that's a big statement.</s>BIDEN: I will transition. It is a big statement.</s>TRUMP: That's a big statement.</s>BIDEN: Because I would stop...</s>KRISTEN WELKER, MODERATOR: Why would you do that?</s>BIDEN: Because the oil industry pollutes, significantly.</s>COLLINS: Vice President Mike Pence voted in his home state of Indiana today, after President Trump announced his vote in person in Florida tomorrow morning, despite defending his plan to vote absentee for months.</s>TRUMP: I signed an absentee ballot. Absentee ballots are great. They work.</s>COLLINS: Now, Jake, you will remember, at the end of September, we found out the Biden campaign about had about three times cash on hand than the Trump campaign. But we are told the president's reelection effort and the Republican National Committee raised about $26 million last night during that debate. We will see what they choose to spend it on over the next 11 days. Not a lot of time left. And that's the same thing that the president's political advisers are thinking, wishing that he had had that debate performance last night at the first debate -- Jake.</s>TAPPER: And, Kaitlan, we should point out that the event you're at right now is that a retirement community, exactly the people who are the most susceptible to the coronavirus, and I don't see a lot of evidence that there any precautions being taken to protect any of these people, who are doing what you're not supposed to be doing during a pandemic, amassing into a large crowd.</s>COLLINS: Yes, Jake, we saw a lot of people wearing masks as we came into the door. But now that they're in here, they're settled, and, of course, we are outside. But, as you can see behind me, they're packed pretty closely together, and a lot of people are not wearing masks. Of course, there is no social distancing happening behind me. We are -- the press is up on a riser, so we're a little bit above and far back from the crowd. But a lot of people here who, of course, are part of a retirement community and are the president's supporters are not wearing masks and not social distancing, even though we're seeing cases surge across the United States.</s>TAPPER: It's just wildly irresponsible. All right, Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Nia-Malika Henderson joins us once again. And let me ask you, Nia, once again, Biden hammered Trump's coronavirus response and explained how he would handle it differently. And then you see the president out there holding these potential super-spreader events. Do you think this works as a closing message for Biden?</s>NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: It's the closing message that they have been going with for these many weeks. And it's essentially where Americans are in terms of the coronavirus is top of mind. It's in our lives every single day. Our lives have had to have been completely reorganized because of COVID. So, he is betting at this message at this point in the nation's dealing with the pandemic, given where we're going, that it's going to get worse, according to all that these experts, is the closing message he wants. You saw it last night. That was a big topic. They think that COVID and character are essentially on the ballot. And so far, if you look in these polls, they're doing very well. Again, it's polls. We have got 11 days left, so we will see where this goes.</s>TAPPER: Right.</s>HENDERSON: But that's where they want to remain.</s>TAPPER: Ron Brownstein coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, deaths all at their highest points in weeks, if not months, and yet President Trump last night, he said this:</s>TRUMP: I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that it came here. It's China's fault. It will go away. And as I say, we're rounding the turn. We're rounding the corner. It's going away.</s>TAPPER: There is no credible medical expert who says that we're rounding the corner, we're rounding the turn, it's going away. Does this have an impact, do you think, on the election, especially with undecided voters?</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Enormously. I mean, from the beginning, the original sin of the administration's response to this has been -- response to this has been Trump's desire to project normalcy at all costs, whatever the impact on public health. And that has shaped not only his decisions, but it put enormous pressure on Republican governors to resist closing, to open up too fast, to override local Democratic ordinances on masks. And he is ending the campaign in a way where, as I have said, the medium is the message. It doesn't matter what he says on the stage. Louder than anything he says is the message that he sends by packing people together without masks, without social distancing. And the message he is sending the public is that, no matter how long he's president, no matter how many people get sick, no matter how many people die, he is not going to take this more seriously. And whatever else he did during the debate last night -- and he did some things well -- that first 10 minutes where he made it very clear that nothing is going to change in his response to this, I thought, was the defining moment of the whole night, because you have 60 percent of the country saying they disapprove of him, the way he's handled this. That's the fundamental gravity in this race. And he basically told all of them, don't expect anything different.</s>TAPPER: And, Nia, President Trump didn't have an answer or a plan as to how he will address this new wave of coronavirus. He just kept saying that things could be worse, and we can't close our nation. Biden, on the other hand, said -- he detailed a whole plan today. And last night, he said he wants to shut down the virus, not the country. I'm sure that there are people out there who like hearing what Trump has to say. But it does seem, just as a matter of politics, that the majority would like to hear -- well, the majority would approve of Biden's message on this issue.</s>HENDERSON: And I think some of the polling reflects that. He is trusted, at least in the data that I have seen, Biden is -- with his responding to COVID in a better way than Donald Trump has responded. I think Ron is exactly right. It has been this essential response to say, there's nothing to see here with COVID. He has these rallies as if there's nothing to be afraid of, particularly in that retirement community. And we do know that older folks are much more vulnerable to this. And we also know that he's doing very poorly among folks who are over 65. This is the message that he thinks is going to win him reelection. This is the message that does resonate with a lot of Republican base voters. But we also know that it's not enough. He's got to build a much broader coalition ought to win in November.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Can I add something here, Jake?</s>TAPPER: Go ahead, yes.</s>BROWNSTEIN: I mean, in that way, to Nia-Malika's point, it really is reflective of his overall vision of how you win this election and the way he's governed for the four years. I mean, there is no effort to persuade a majority of the existing electorate that he is on the right track in handling this. What he's clearly trying to do, I think, as he does on almost every other issue, is mobilize that minority of the country that says open up at all costs, to use masks is an infringement on personal liberty, and change the electorate by bringing out more of those voters. That really is his one path at this point. There is I think no prospect, this late in his presidency, that the broad majority of college whites and young people and people of color who have rejected him are going to change their mind. I think, once again, he is playing to the short side of the field by doing this and trying to send a signal to those voters who are the most ideological, the most alienated from the way America is evolving, and trying to bring more of them into the voting booth in two weeks.</s>TAPPER: Yes. It worked once. We will see if it works again. Ron Brownstein, Nia-Malika Henderson, thanks so much. Breaking news about one of the coronavirus vaccine trials here in the United States that was put on pause. Plus: why the head of the National Institutes of Health says the virus could be with us for years.