Tens of millions of Americans are turning to their screens to watch the first debate between US presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump, 74, and Democrat Joe Biden, 77, in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Trump and Biden campaigns exchanged accusations a few hours before the debate between them in Ohio, which is a swing state in which neither party has a sizeable majority.

President Trump and his Democratic opponent Biden have arrived in Cleveland, where the two candidates will face for the first time face-to-face over a period of 90 minutes, in a debate moderated by Fox News journalist Chris Wallace, and that begins at 4:00 in the morning, Wednesday, Mecca time at Case Western University.

Tonight's debate is the first of three that will bring together Trump and Biden face to face, and a fourth debate will take place, but between the two contenders for the vice presidency, before the presidential election scheduled for November 3, as Biden leads Trump, according to nationwide opinion polls. .

Donald Trump (left) and rival Joe Biden will face each other in their first of 3 debates (French)

Corresponding issues

The first debate will deal with 6 major issues, namely the record of Trump and Biden's achievements, the controversy over Trump's nomination as a judge for the Supreme Court, the Coronavirus crisis, economic policies, racism and violence in American cities, and finally the integrity of the elections.

It is also expected that the issue of Trump's tax records will be raised after what was revealed by the New York Times.

In this context, hours before his first debate with Trump, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday released his 2019 tax returns, and his campaign called on Trump to do the same.

Biden took the move two days after The New York Times announced that Trump paid only $ 750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, after reporting for years that his companies had incurred heavy losses.

Trump has not paid income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years.

Trump has long sought to keep his personal financial records secret.

Biden's tax returns showed that he and his wife Jill paid more than $ 346,000 in federal taxes and other payments for 2019 on nearly $ 985,000 in income, before they sought to recover the nearly $ 47,000 they said they had paid more than they should have paid.

"This is a historic level of transparency aimed at giving the American people confidence once again that their leaders will care about them and not their net income," Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a phone call to reporters.

"Sir, issue your tax returns or shut up," she added.

Reciprocal accusations

The Trump and Biden campaigns traded accusations Tuesday, ahead of the date of their first televised debate.

The Trump team said the Biden campaign had reneged on an agreement requiring candidates before the debate to undergo an inspection to verify that they did not have electronic headphones, and demanded several breaks during the debate.

"Of course he's not going to put a headphone on," the Washington Post quoted Biden's deputy campaign manager as saying at a conference call. "We never called for breaks."

Bedingfield responded by saying, "If we are going to be drawn into this game, you know that the Trump team asked (moderator) Chris Wallace not to mention the death toll from Covid-19 even once in the debate."

"You can take it as a confirmation from the Biden campaign," she said, adding, "Did you see how easy it is to bring up distractions?"

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Marto denied that any such request had been made from the Fox News host who would run the debate.

He continued in a statement, "This is a lie, this matter has not happened at all," adding, "It is the summit of politicization of a crisis affecting public health."

He pointed out that "Biden is trying to divert attention from his lack of commitment to undergo an inspection to detect the presence of earphones, or to undergo an examination to detect doping, and his need for several breaks during a 90-minute debate."

Trump has always considered that his Democratic opponent suffers from dementia, and recently hinted that he had doped, demanding that he be tested to detect them, a request Biden mocked.