VP debate live: Kamala Harris and Mike Pence to go head to head | US news

Pence has invited Ann Dorn, the widow of retired police captain David Dorn, to the debate

Dorn also spoke during the Republican National Convention about her late husband, who died amid protests against police brutality in St Louis. She said he died while trying to protect a friend’s shop from looters, and during the RNC told voters to support Trump because he understands that “violence and destruction are not legitimate forms of protest…They do not safeguard Black lives. They only destroy them.”

But the late Dorn’s daughters said they objected to their father’s death being politicized. David Dorn and his wife disagreed on politics, and “what I want people to know is that my father would not have wanted his name, his image, his likeness to be used and politicized to continue to support the efforts of Trump and his administration, especially his law-and-order agenda,” daughter Lisa Dorn told CNN.

What’s the format?

The debate will be divided into nine 10-minute segments – and last a total of 90 minutes.

After a chaotic first presidential debate, during which Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Joe Biden and moderator Chris Wallace, we’re expecting a more civil performance by the vice presidential candidates tonight.

Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Mike Pence and Kamala Harris are scheduled to take the debate stage at 9pm ET in Salt Lake City, for their first and only face-off of this election cycle.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has already affected the staging and format of the debate, will undoubtedly be a major topic of discussion tonight. The two campaigns have already argued over whether the candidates should be separated by plexiglass barriers after Pence was exposed to the virus amid an outbreak at the White House. (The dinky barriers that were, eventually, put up are not useful, disease experts say, as the virus could be transmitted through the air).

As the president continues to recover from a Covid-19 infection, Pence – the head of the White House coronavirus task force – will have to answer for why the administration has failed to prevent an outbreak within the White House, even as the national coronavirus death toll ticks past 210,000.

Meanwhile, Harris will have an easier job. As a senator and former prosecutor, Harris has established herself as a sharp questioner – and she’ll have to attack the administration’s failures without coming off as attacking the sick president.

Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, will moderate the debate.