No audience, microphones cut to avoid slander: CNN, which hosts Thursday's first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, wants to avoid the chaos of the previous duel of 2020, for this unmissable encounter that has a difficult impact on the forecast.
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Insults, taunts and the outgoing president, Donald Trump, constantly interrupts his rival Joe Biden, who ends up saying “Will you shut up, man?”: CNN hopes to avoid the cacophony that dominated the first televised duel in the United States. Previous presidential elections. First, the debate will take place without an audience, at the channel’s studios in Atlanta, from nine o’clock in the evening (01:00 GMT Friday). Above all, Joe Biden's microphone will be cut off when Donald Trump speaks, and vice versa.
The two oldest candidates in American history – 81 for Biden and 78 for Trump – will stand behind the podium for 90 minutes.
CNN asserts that its directors, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the channel's personalities, “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce speaking times and ensure a civil debate.”
Joe Biden won a coin that allowed him to choose which side he would stand on the stage or whether he wanted to speak first or second during closing statements. The outgoing president chose to stand on the right of the screen, leaving the option to Donald Trump to finally intervene and close the discussion.
CNN has not specified what topics will be covered and does not plan to fact-check in real time.
“One of the problems with the debate with Donald Trump,” he repeats by way of example without providing evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him, is that the moderators cannot check the facts in real time, and it is better not to, it will be so. “This is very risky and would disrupt the debate,” asserts Kathleen Hall Jamison, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. “The danger is that instead of providing information, the discussion can multiply inaccurate information,” she adds.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump will not have teleprompters or small cards prepared, but they will be provided with something to take notes. They will not be able to speak with their teams during the two trade periods.
The two candidates turned their backs on the Commission on Presidential Debates, an independent body, to rely on CNN. Meeting the challenge of public service, Warner Bros. However, Discovery allowed its competitors to broadcast simultaneously, with the CNN logo and without outside commentary.
This means that Fox News followers will be able to stay on the channel favored by conservatives. Fox News plans to go on the air two hours before the debate, with its editors Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, who regularly attack CNN, which its supporters consider “anti-Trump.”
The second has already described Jake Tapper as “a far-left activist hiding behind the mask of a journalist.”
The debate is a key, but not necessarily decisive, event in the US presidential campaign, and is widely watched: 84 million viewers for the first duel between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a record 73 million viewers for the first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020.
But this is the first time the debate has been organized so early, more than four months before the election, and even though the candidates have not been officially nominated by their parties. “The danger is that the American public does not pay as much attention to the news in the summer,” emphasizes Kathleen Hall Jamison.
“Typically, presidential debates do not influence enough votes to determine the outcome of the election. But when the elections are close, as they may be this time, they can play an important role.”
A second debate is scheduled to be broadcast on ABC on September 10, two months before the election.
