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The Presidential Debate Commission announced the rule changes for the second and last debate to avoid repeating the chaotic scenes of the first. Trump received strong criticism from political observers and moderator Chris Wallace for repeatedly interrupting his opponent.
After the changes were announced, the Trump campaign pledged to attend the debate “regardless of last minute changes to the rules of the biased commission in its latest attempt to provide an advantage to its favorite candidate.”
In the immediate aftermath of the first event, which was held in Cleveland, Ohio, last month, the commission announced that it would discuss changes for the second debate, which ended up being canceled in the wake of Trump’s positive Covid-19 test when he refused. To do it. discuss remotely. Instead, he and Biden held rival televised municipal events.
The commission said that it “had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures designed to promote compliance with the agreed rules and that it is inappropriate to make changes to those rules.”
Thursday’s debate is scheduled to take place in Nashville, Tennessee, and will be moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker.
The 90-minute debate will be divided into six 15-minute segments and each candidate will be able to deliver their initial two minutes without interruption.
However, the open discussion portion of each segment will not see a mute button used on the microphones, the commission said.
This means that both candidates will still be able to talk about each other after the initial two minutes.
The first debate was universally criticized for the way it unfolded.
Trump interrupted Biden early on, and the former vice president was frustrated during the opening segment of the Supreme Court.
“Do you want to shut up man?” Biden finally asked Trump while talking about him.
As Wallace tried to move on to the coronavirus, Biden told him, “That was a really productive segment.”
During a discussion about health care, Wallace repeatedly tried to get his question across to Trump, who continued to interrupt him.
“I guess I’m debating with you, not him,” Trump told Wallace.
After the discussion, Mr. Wallace told the New York Times that it had been “a terrible missed opportunity” for the country.
“I never dreamed that he would go off the track like he did,” he said..
The veteran announcer admitted that he never took full control of the debate when it became clear that the president would not stick to the rules they had agreed to.
Wallace was asked if muting Trump’s mic would have helped him maintain some control.
“As a practical matter, even if the president’s microphone had been closed, he could still have continued to interrupt, and he could well have been picked up by Biden’s microphone, and still would have interrupted proceedings in the room,” he said. .
Wallace also said he was uncomfortable with the idea of silencing the two men running for the White House.
“People have to remember, and too many people forget, both candidates have the support of tens of millions of Americans,” he said.
The second debate, which was supposed to take place on October 15, was initially postponed by the commission following Trump’s positive coronavirus test.
The commission then announced that the debate would take place virtually, but Trump was quick to decline to participate in that format.
Once the president withdrew from the debate, Biden’s campaign booked him an ABC town hall.
This was followed by the president who agreed to participate in an NBC town hall that was controversially slated to face Biden’s event head on.
In the end, Biden drew a larger television audience than Trump with an average of 15.1 million viewers compared to the president’s 13.5 million.
The cancellation of the second debate had created some doubts as to whether both candidates would agree to go ahead with the third and final debate.
Hours before the changes were announced Monday, the Trump campaign had urged the commission to “rethink and reissue a number of issues” for debate.
In an open letter posted on Twitter, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien demanded that the debate focus on foreign policy.
In it, he argued that Americans deserved to know “whether a major party candidate for president of the United States is committed to the Communist Party of China.”
Moderator Kristen Welker has said that the topics for discussion will be “Fighting COVID-19,” “American Families,” “Race in America,” “Climate Change,” “National Security,” and “Leadership.”
Stepien argued that it was a tradition in past campaigns for the issues to be reissued, and said the commission did not need to “consult with the Biden campaign before responding because we all know what they think.”
Trump has also begun trying to question Ms Welker’s impartiality, saying at a campaign rally in Arizona on Monday that the NBC White House correspondent was “a radical Democrat.”
