Stephen Colbert on debate mute rule: 'How about a fast-forward button?'
“As the election day barrels down on us like an out-of-control manure spreader, one of the last chances to influence the race is this Thursday’s presidential debate,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. After a widely panned first debate in which Donald Trump interrupted the moderator Chris Wallace and Democratic opponent Joe Biden a whopping 128 times, the commission on presidential debates announced the institution of a mute button to silence the opposing candidate’s microphone during twominute responses (“open discussion” portions of the debate will proceed as normal).
“While we’re at it, how about a fastforward button?” Colbert wondered. “Just zip straight to November 3.”
Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, blasted the rule change, calling it the commission’s “latest attempt to provide advantage to their favorite candidate”.
“Enforcing the rules isn’t giving someone an advantage,” Colbert responded. “That’s like saying ‘the Olympic judges are playing favorites because they won’t let me throw bricks at Michael Phelps!’”
However, the mute button could end up helping Trump, Colbert added, as his debate prep team has reportedly coached Trump to stop interrupting Biden and appear more “likable”.
“Hold on, NOW they’re trying to make Trump more likable?” Colbert said. “He’s been president for almost four years! That’s like a firefighter showing up to your house and saying, ‘OK, let’s wait for everything to burn to the ground, then sprinkle a little water on there and see what happens.’”
Meanwhile, as coronavirus cases rise sharply across the nation, Trump continued to brush aside the emergent third wave of the pandemic. At a rally on Monday night, Trump claimed America was “rounding the turn” on coronavirus, despite rising hospitalization numbers in 41 states. “Really? Rounding? Have you seen the Covid spikes?” Colbert retorted. “We’re not rounding the turn. I’m pretty sure we’re sharpening the turn. What we’re looking at here is a razor-sharp turn.”
Instead, Trump has pivoted away from talking about the pandemic because, as he said, “people are pandemiced out”.
“That’s quite a rallying cry when we’re facing an existential threat: ‘We’re tired of it!’” Colbert joked.
Jimmy Kimmel
The decision by the commission on presidential debates to mute candidates’ microphones during standard two-minute responses is “the same strategy my daughter’s teachers use for Zoom kindergarten”, joked Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday night. “Would a mute button even work on Donald Trump? I feel like if you turn off his microphone he’ll just pull another one out of his hair or something.”
Trump has predictably lashed out about the rule change on Fox News, where he claimed the decision was evidence of the commission’s bias against him. “Before every debate, every election, every interview even, he announces that they’re plotting against him,” Kimmel explained. “And in this case, even the guys who are running the sound system are plotting against him.”
In two Fox News call-ins, Trump claimed the commission unfairly “modulated” and “oscillated” his microphone during the 2016 debates. “They oscillated it, they modulated it, they constipated it,” Kimmel joked. “These microphones are out to get the president – it’s a total pitch-hunt.”
A better question, Kimmel added, is “how many months after he loses do you think Fox & Friends just stops taking his calls live on the show?”
Trevor Noah
And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah also found the installation of a debate mute button to be probably futile. “Trump doesn’t care if you mute his microphone,” he said. “He’s just going to shout. Or even worse, he’ll just walk over to Biden and use his mic. He’ll probably lick it too just to mark his territory.
“Clearly, Trump needs to enjoy his open mic time while he can,” he added, which is why Trump continues to hold large, in-person rallies across the country even as coronavirus cases surge. Despite outbreaks tied to his rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in Minnesota, Trump has dismissed safety concerns because, as he claimed in a rally this week, people are “pandemic-ed out”.
“Trump is not wrong about people being tired of the dealing with this pandemic,” Noah said. “But what he doesn’t seem to realize is that unlike the rest of us, he can actually do something about this. Instead, he’s acting like he’s as helpless as everyone else is.”