Control Freak? Debate Moderator Will Be Allowed to Turn Off Candidates Mic’s At Thursday’s Debate

The Commission on Presidential Debates has a plan to make sure President Trump and Joe Biden play nice on Thursday night and not interrupt each other during the second presidential debate. They will mute the person who is not on the clock during the two-minute response time allotted to their opponents. That’s right, they will turn their microphones off they said in a statement because they “had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed-upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.”

For fans of their candidates still having the ability to talk over their opponent, there will be an open discussion forum that won’t include the mute option. The debate will last 90 minutes and consist of six 15-minute segments.

Both campaigns found fault with the new format. Team Trump had hinted that the President might blow off the event if micr were going to be muted, but he’s going to show up in Nashville. “President Trump 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,” read a statement from campaign manager Bill Stepien

Democratic New York Senator Chuck Shumer was one of the first to suggest the muted mic idea, saying a day after the first debate “the bottom line is Donald Trump doesn’t follow the rules [and] the commission has got to get a lot tougher.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, argued that the last thing the moderator needed was more power, which is exactly what having control of the mic would give her. “If you are going to run for the free leader of this world we want to hear what you have to say, but now we’re going to allow one person to moderate it to determine what the American people can hear from our candidates?”

Let’s just hope they don’t mute out the good parts.