Final presidential face-off features mute button
After the first presidential debate went off the rails, Americans will now get their final chance ahead of the election to see President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden face off.
The second debate between Trump and Biden will include a mute button, in the hopes of limiting interruptions that took over the first debate. Trump was responsible for the majority of the butting in.
The new mute button means that the candidate not speaking during an opening two-minute answer will have his microphone cut off. After the two minutes for each side, their microphones will not be muted during the remaining 11 minutes of each segment. The debate kicks off at 9 tonight.
The Commission on Presidential Debates after the first debate stressed that new rules should be added “to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”
“We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today,” the commission said in a statement. “One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement that the president “is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
Debate moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News has selected the following six topics for the 90-minute debate: Fighting COVID-19; American Families; Race in America; Climate Change;
National Security; and Leadership.
The Trump campaign has urged the Commission to focus more on foreign policy, saying it was billed as the “Foreign Policy Debate.”
Biden’s national press secretary TJ Ducklo responded in a statement, “The campaigns and the Commission agreed months ago that the debate moderator would choose the topics. The Trump campaign is lying about that now because Donald Trump is afraid to face more questions about his disastrous COVID response.”