Takeaways from the dueling Biden and Trump town halls

 (CNN)On ABC, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was explaining his plan to raise taxes on people making more than $400,000 per year. On NBC, President Donald Trump was equivocating about the existence of a satanic cult of pedophiles.

The problem with their town halls, which were drastically different in tone and substance: Americans could only pick one to watch.

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With the second presidential debate scrapped in the wake of Trump's coronavirus diagnosis, the two candidates instead agreed to nationally televised town halls, with Biden taking questions from voters in Philadelphia and Trump doing so in Miami. The two are scheduled to debate just one more time.

Here's are five takeaways from the dueling town halls:

Trump's alternate reality

No hour has better illustrated the alternate reality in which Trump exists than Thursday's 60-minute town hall.

Trump claimed the science is still out on wearing masks, despite the universal view of health experts -- including within his own administration -- that it can mitigate the spread of coronavirus.

He refused to say whether or not he believed Democrats were running a satanic pedophile ring, shrugging when pressed and saying only, "I have no idea."

He claimed with no evidence that ballots with his name on them had been found in garbage cans.

And he would not affirm that a conspiratorial tweet he retweeted claiming Osama Bin Laden is still alive is false, saying, "People can decide for themselves."

"I don't get that," moderator Savannah Guthrie said after that last equivocation. "You're the President, not somebody's crazy uncle."

Contained within Trump's regular venues of conservative television and Twitter, the upside-down world in which he exists sometimes loses its impact. But in front of everyday voters, his answers appeared wildly detached from any accepted version of reality. Voters deciding between Trump and Biden find themselves choosing less between two candidates than two entirely opposite planets.