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The president of the United States, Trump, and his challenger Biden will face tonight in the second television duel. The first debate was remembered for the numerous interruptions. We have evaluated the duel transcript.
The first television duel between Trump and Biden was not a substantive debate, but a dispute between two that continued to interrupt each other.
The first television duel between US President Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden three weeks ago only lasted 18 minutes, so Biden had enough. Trump had already interrupted him several times, so Biden yelled at him:
“Can you shut up, man?”
Trump couldn’t. Or did not want.
For the remaining 72 minutes of the debate, Biden and Trump regularly interrupted each other. The moderator of the debate, television journalist Chris Wallace (Fox News), was interrupted again and again or even had to interrupt the candidates because they did not obey the rules. As a viewer, you couldn’t understand anyone because everyone was talking at the same time. For the “New York Times” it was “90 minutes of chaos”, for the news magazine “Spiegel” it was “perhaps the most chaotic television duel in the history of the US presidential elections.”
The NZZ has evaluated the transcript of the first debate between Trump and Biden. We investigated who interrupted whom how often and who was interrupted how often. In addition, we analyzed the transcripts of television debates since 2008 to link the chaos of the first debate with previous debates.
This comparison shows that the duel between Biden and Trump was truly exceptional in terms of disruptions. The total number of interruptions is much higher than in other television matches of the past. However, the duels of 2016, when Trump and Hillary Clinton faced each other, were already more chaotic than in previous years.
In Nashville, Tennessee, the second and final direct television matchup between Trump and Biden before the November 3 presidential election will take place on Thursday night (local time). The second planned debate was canceled after Trump refused to participate. Organizers wanted to duel online after his Covid 19 illness, which Trump rejected. Instead, the two opponents competed with each other on different television channels in a long-distance duel.
This Thursday, Trump and Biden meet again in person. The commission in charge of television duels has even changed the rules so that candidates can interrupt each other less frequently. In the new format, the microphones are muted to allow each candidate an uninterrupted talk time of two minutes per segment. The microphones are only turned back on during the open discussion that follows.
In the second television duel, the other’s microphone is turned off during the two-minute opening response to each of the six topics of the debate.
“Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate”
Would it have been a sensible option for the first match? Regardless, moderator Chris Wallace had trouble even asking his questions fully before Trump interrupted him.
First he asked: “You are debating with him [Biden] and not with me. Let me ask you my question. “Then it became clearer:” Mr. President, I am moderating this debate and I would like to ask you to allow me to ask my question and then you can answer. “
That didn’t work either. After nearly a third of the duel, Wallace turned to both candidates: “I think the country would be better served if we allowed both of them to speak with less interruption.”
Addressing Trump directly, Wallace said, “I ask you to do that, sir.” To which Trump replied: “He [Biden] but also.”
Wallace replied, “To be honest, you interrupted more than he did.”
And Wallace was right: Trump interrupted Biden more often during the duel than the other way around. This is demonstrated by the analysis of the transcript.
In all the disruptions, Trump is also well ahead of Biden and Wallace. Interestingly, Trump interrupted moderator Wallace more often than his challenger Biden. That’s surprising, since the goal of the debate is actually a substantive speech between the current president and his rival. By contrast, moderator Wallace interrupted the president of the United States more often than Biden. He did that, for example, to finish his question or to ask Trump to let Biden finish.
Even during the debate, viewers on the social media platform Twitter poked fun at Trump and Wallace’s mutual interruptions.
I, for one, believe that Joe Biden did a masterful job of moderating the debate between Donald Trump and Chris Wallace. Waiting for the next one. # Debates2020
– Cousin Sal (@TheCousinSal) September 30, 2020
This joke suggests that Biden moderated the debate, not Wallace. Evaluation of the data shows that, in some cases, it was actually more of a trade between Wallace and Trump.
All three speakers were interrupted by the others roughly the same number of times. This becomes clear when you invert the categories in the diagram and show who is from wem was interrupted. The layout is interesting: Wallace was mostly cut off by Trump, while Biden let the moderator finish speaking. On the other hand, Trump was interrupted much more frequently by Wallace than by his adversary.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s continued disruptions were intentional or whether he spontaneously acted in an extremely domineering way. In any case, his behavior did not help him. Most Americans saw Joe Biden as the winner of the first game, according to a poll conducted by the news portal “fivethirtyeight” and the polling institute Ipsos. Consequently, two-thirds of those surveyed rated Trump’s performance as “bad,” while Biden’s performance was “good” for 60 percent.
Lester Holt let Clinton and Trump finish talking in 2016
Since 2008, there has never been such a chaotic television debate with as many interruptions as the first graphic shows. In addition to the number of interruptions, the distribution was also different. This can be seen in a comparison with the first television debate between Trump and Clinton before the 2016 presidential election.
In 2016, news reporter Lester Holt moderated the first television debate. Absolutely Considered, Trump interrupted his opponent Hillary Clinton and host Lester Holt less than he did Wallace and Biden three weeks ago. Relative but in view the difference is even greater because Holt and Clinton rarely interrupted each other. The role of moderator Holt compared to Wallace is particularly striking. Holt let most of Clinton and Trump finish speaking and only interrupted them sporadically.
Although Lester Holt received a majority of praise for his restraint in hindsight in 2016, there were also critical voices who said he should have berated Trump more. Trump interrupted Holt nearly 30 times and even then continued to break up the debate.
In the first match of 2016, the distribution of who was interrupted by who was also less evenly distributed. Trump could talk most of the time and have long monologues without the intervention of Clinton or Holt.
Trump is against the rule change
It is questionable whether Trump will act more cautiously in the second game in light of criticism and tougher rules. He had been reluctant to mute the microphones. “I’m going to participate. I just think it’s very unfair,” Trump said. He also said that he believed the rule change was an attack on Republicans and that the corresponding commission staff were not good people.
In the latest polls, President Trump is far behind Democrat Biden. If the election for president of the United States takes place today, it is very likely that Biden will win. So Trump is under pressure: he has to convince more voters in the second duel.
NBC News White House correspondent and television host Kristen Welker will moderate the final television match before the presidential election. Trump had already denigrated her beforehand as a “radical left-wing Democrat.” Therefore, it is assumed that there will be friction again. Trump is likely to interfere again, interrupt, intervene. No one can hear it on television, at least once in a while for two minutes.
Sources: Transcripts of television debates about the presidential elections in the United States are posted on the website of the Commission on Presidential Debates. It is an independent commission that organizes the debates. Transcripts can be found on the website here. The transcript of the first debate between Trump and Biden is not yet available there. That is why we used a transcript available on the rev.com website for the new duel. It can be found here. We compared it to the recordings of the debate and found it useful in terms of quality.
Methodology: In the transcripts, we first look at how the breaks are marked on them. Then we search and add the results. For the more detailed analyzes of the early TV debates of 2016 and 2020, we manually assigned the interruptions to the respective people. Interruption was considered when a person’s speech was interrupted by another person, and when it can be clearly assigned by whom.
Limitations: In this analysis we have the number of the interruptions in television duels were accounted for. We do not consider Art Y Reason of interruptions. Interruptions can only consist of a short interjection or a full monologue. Interruptions can occur, for example, to correct a false statement immediately. Also, we do not take into account how long before the interruption was spoken. An interruption may be more justified if the conversation was disproportionately long before. Furthermore, we cannot rule out slight distortions due to different encoding of the breaks in the transcripts.
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