Heard on All Things Considered
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off in a presidential debate next week on CNN, with the network announcing the rules this weekend.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
A week from Thursday, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will go head-to-head in a presidential debate. There are a number of differences between this debate, including that it's taking place in June, months before the election and months before presidential candidates typically meet in debates. It's also being hosted by CNN, not the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has stuck to a more centrist, traditional format for decades. CNN announced the format and rules for the debate this weekend, and NPR's Stephen Fowler joins us from Atlanta to talk about how they'll affect the June 27 showdown. Hi, Stephen.
Stephen Fowler: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: So let's look at the bigger picture. Presidential debates have been around for a long time, but this one is hosted by CNN and in many ways it breaks with that tradition. How different is it going to be here?
Fowler: So that means there will be no opening statements. There will be no cheering or heckling from the studio audience. And the networks say that candidates' microphones will be cut off and muted when they're not answering questions or given time for rebuttal. Speaking of time, this debate will be 90 minutes long, with two commercial breaks. Also for the first time, candidates will have two minutes for a response, one minute for a rebuttal, one minute for a rebuttal to the rebuttal, and one more minute at the moderator's discretion. In some ways, that's plenty of time to hear both candidates speak, but not really. So we'll basically only have five minutes on the issues that matter: immigration, Trump's crimes, and other topics about the future of America. So you and I will spend almost that much time cramming in a ton of information about the debate, but we're not long-winded politicians.
DETROW: And I won't yell or interrupt or attack you when you're speaking. This is relevant because I was at the first debate between Trump and Biden in 2020, which was marked by constant attacks and interruptions by Trump. So I think this rule about muting microphones is going to be very important.
FOWLER: Oh, absolutely. For example, Joe Biden was asked about expanding the Supreme Court, and Trump didn't like that Biden dodged the question, but we don't remember his answer after all, because this exchange happened in a 2020 debate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
Joe Biden: I'm not going to answer that question, because…
Donald Trump: Why don't you answer that question?
BIDEN: Because the question is…
TRUMP: Would you like to appoint many new justices to the Supreme Court?
BIDEN: The problem is…
TRUMP: …far-left.
Biden: Can you just shut up?
TRUMP: Look, Joe, who's on your list? Who's on your list?
BIDEN: This is really…
Chris Wallace: I think that's it, folks…
BIDEN: This is unpresidential.
TRUMP: He's going to fill the Supreme Court. He's not going to give us a list.
WALLACE: That's all for this segment. Let's move on to the next one.
BIDEN: It was a really productive session.
DETROW: That brings back a lot of memories. Of course, as you've covered extensively, Biden and Trump are not the only candidates in this race. There's been a lot of third-party interest this year, but these two will almost certainly be the only ones onstage at this debate. Why is that?
Fowler: CNN has a standard. You have to be constitutionally eligible to be president, meet a 15% approval rating in four different quality polls, and get enough votes to be mathematically considered a possibility to actually be president. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be able to meet that approval rating, but not the threshold to be on the ballot. He's only officially on the ballot in a handful of states, and his campaign has filed petitions in many other states, but they haven't been confirmed yet. So in this debate, he doesn't meet that standard. And there are other candidates and camps, like the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and so on, but those will be the ones to decide who doesn't win the election. So in many ways, this debate could help with that choice as well.
DETROW: Absolutely. Doing this early, before Kennedy is eligible to win 270 states, is certainly one of the motivations for the campaigns wanting to do this early. What other reasons did the Trump and Biden campaigns insist on doing this early?
Fowler: Exactly. Debates are usually a collection of short statements to promote themselves or attack their opponent. Both Trump and Biden are well known. Nothing new is going to happen there, so they want to use those short statements to impress upon people the importance of the election and their vision of what America will be like if they win or if their opponent wins. So we've been doing interviews and talking to people who haven't yet accepted the fact that it's a Trump-Biden rematch. So both the Trump and Biden campaigns are hoping that by building up the debate in June, it will be enough for people to really start thinking, “Yes, this is happening.”
