US elections: Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden held their final debate in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday evening, with less than two weeks to go before the Nov. 3 presidential elections.

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To avoid a rerun of their first contentious debate, in which Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden, each candidate’s microphone was switched off while his opponent made a statement on a topic. NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker was moderating.

Here are some key quotes from Trump and Biden as they launched their final bid to convince undecided American voters.

COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Welker asked how each candidate would lead the country out of the pandemic crisis.

Trump: "We`re fighting it and we`re fighting it hard… We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away.”

Trump: "I caught it. I learned a lot … We have to recover. We can`t close up our nation."

Biden: "If you hear nothing else I say tonight hear this ... Anyone who`s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of United States of America."

Biden: "This is the same fellow told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This is the same fellow who told you that, don`t worry, we`re going to end this by the summer. We`re about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan."

Trump: "I don`t know if we`re going to have a dark winter, and at all. We`re opening up our country. We`ve learned and studied and understand the disease."

Biden: "He says, we`re, you know, we`re learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it."

FOREIGN POLICY

Biden: "He`s legitimized North Korea. He`s talked about his good buddy (leader Kim Jong Un), who`s a thug, a thug. And he talks about how we`re better off when North Korea is much more capable of firing a missile that is able to reach U.S. territory. "

Trump: "You know what? North Korea - we`re not in a war. We have a good relationship."

Biden: "We had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe. Come on."

"The reason he (Kim) would not meet with President Obama is because President Obama said, `We`re going to talk about denuclearization. We`re not going to legitimize you. We`re going to continue to push stronger and stronger sanctions on you.` That`s why he wouldn`t meet with us."

HEALTHCARE

Trump: "No matter how well you run (the Affordable Care Act), it`s no good. What we`d like to do is terminate it. We have the individual mandate done. I don`t know that it`s going to work. If we don`t win (in court) ... we`ll have Obamacare but it will be better run."

Biden: "People deserve to have affordable health care, period. Period. Period. Period."

IMMIGRATION

Biden on children separated at the border: “It makes us a laughingstock and it violates every notion of who we are.”

Trump: "Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels ... We let people in but they have to come in legally."

The story has been taken from a news agency