MIC AND THE MAD DOG
TRUMP RIPS ‘MUTED’ DEBATE
The showdown in Nashville marks perhaps the final chance for President Trump to cut into Joe Biden’s healthy lead in the polls in an election that has so far been defined by popular discontent over the president’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 90-minute showdown, which kicks off at 9 p.m. Eastern time, will be the first time Trump and Biden have met since their first debate last month degenerated into a widely panned shout fest.
It’s also the first debate since Trump was infected by COVID-19. He was hospitalized for three days but has since apparently fully recovered.
A second debate was planned with a town-hall format but the non-partisan debate commission scrapped it after Trump refused to appear remotely after he contracted COVID-19.
The final debate will be moderated by NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker and will be a direct face-off between the two men, with no questions from voters.
“Kristen represents the best of NBC News and of journalism generally,” said her boss, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim. “She’s fair, she’s deeply prepared, she’s well-versed in the issues and she’s going to do a great job.”
She’s also the first Black woman to moderate a presidential debate since Carole Simpson in 1992.
Earlier this month, Trump aide Jason Miller said on Fox News that he has “a very high opinion” of Welker and suggested she would do an excellent job as moderator. She’s “very fair in her approach,” Miller said.
Yet last weekend, the president tweeted that Welker has “always been terrible and unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters.”
Debate organizers are promising some relief to weary viewers by muting candidates’ microphones during their opponents’ opening statements on each of six major topics. But skeptics note that Trump and Biden will still be free to disrupt the other speaker or Welker during the rest of the debate.
Trump’s advisers are urging him Trump to tone down the aggression he exhibited in the first debate for a lower-key style that will would allow Biden, who’s prone to gaffes, to make himself look bad.
Biden is expecting Trump to slam him and get intensely personal about his son Hunter Biden, who was at the center of an unconfirmed report last week that cites an email in which an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked him for arranging a meeting with his father during a 2015 visit to Washington.
Trump’s attacks on the Biden family included his efforts to
get Ukraine to investigate the former vice president — which led to Trump’s impeachment. It’s widely seen part of a strategy confuse voters by pointing to Biden’s negatives, similar to what he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Biden, meanwhile, will likely focus on how Trump is unfit for office, using his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic as Exhibit A.
“[Biden] knows that people want to hear about how we’re going to help working families get through the end of the month and pay the rent,” his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, said Wednesday in North Carolina. “That’s what people care about, and one of the things I love about Joe Biden — he doesn’t take on or talk about other people’s kids.”
Political analysts are split on the impact of presidential debates on the overall campaign.
In general, the first debate of any campaign draws a much bigger audience than later clashes and therefore offers candidates a better chance to reach large blocks of undecided voters.
In 2020, far more voters have already cast ballots than at this time in any previous election, possibly limiting the impact of the final debate.
More than 40 million Americans have already voted either by mail or early in person, more than twice the total from four years ago.