After Unruly First Debate, Trump and Biden Hit Campaign Trail in Crucial States

President 👤Donald Trump and Democratic challenger 👤Joe Biden will campaign in three U.S. states that will play a key role in the November election on Wednesday, the morning after a chaotic debate marked by interruptions and recriminations.

Trump deflected an opportunity to condemn white supremacists and again refused to say if he would accept the election results in Tuesday night’s first 2020 debate, two moments that could give Biden fresh ammunition.

The first of three televised matchups represented one of Trump’s few remaining chances to change the trajectory of a race that most national opinion polls show him losing, as the majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of both the coronavirus pandemic and protests over racial injustice.

The Republican Trump, 74, will spend the day in Minnesota – one of the few states his campaign is targeting that voted Democratic in 2016 – with a fundraiser in the afternoon before a rally in Duluth.

Biden, 77, and his wife, Jill, will embark on an all-day train tour through a half-dozen cities in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, including counties that Trump won four years ago on the strength of working-class white voters.

Pennsylvania, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, is seen by many strategists as the most crucial of the six most competitive states that will likely decide the election outcome, which also include Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of Pennsylvania gave Biden a slight advantage there.

Ohio, which Trump carried by 8 percentage points in his 2016 defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton, is among the Republican-leaning states that Biden hopes to put into play in November.