30, September 2020
Race for the White House: First debate between Trump and Biden- an embarrassment 0
The first debate between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was an “embarrassment” to the United States, says Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications chief.
Their 90-minute debate, the first of three debates ahead of the 2020 presidential election in November, was held in a venue in Cleveland, Ohio. The other two debates are scheduled on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22.
During the debate, the two politicians kept interrupting each other and trading insults, with the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, struggling to maintain control over the debate proceedings.
“I don’t think anybody won. That debate, you know, was a little bit of an embarrassment to the country, frankly,” Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Wednesday.
“I didn’t like it, I think most people didn’t like that debate,” he said, noting that there must be a better system to control how upcoming debates are held.
Although US stock futures fell following the debate, Scaramucci said what the markets thought of the debate will only become clearer the next morning.
“I just think it’s a little fickle right now,” said the former White House communications director fired by Trump in 2017 less than two weeks into the job.
“We all saw the debate, it was a nasty debate, it was an interrupting match if you will,” he added. “I don’t think the polls are going to move that much and if the markets have moved because of the debate, it will settle out over the next open if you will.”
Scaramucci, who has previously thrown his support behind Biden, told CNBC that he still believes the former vice president will win the race for the White House.
He said he did not think that Americans are better off in comparison to four years ago when Trump was first elected due to the health and economic crises that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic.
He went on to say that even though Trump cannot be blamed for the pandemic, “you can blame him for the way he’s handled it.”
Scaramucci also described Biden a more likeable figure compared to Trump. “The vice president has the momentum and he’s less polarizing than Donald Trump,” said Scaramucci. “I think the vice president’s gonna beat him.”
Source: Presstv
1, October 2020
US presidential debate commission to adopt new rules in wake of ‘disgraceful’ first round 0
The presidential debate commission says it will soon adopt changes to its format to avoid a repeat of the disjointed first meeting between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.
The commission said Wednesday the debate “made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”
One possibility being discussed is to give the moderator the ability to cut off the microphone of one of the debate participants while his opponent is talking, according to a person familiar with the deliberations who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The next presidential debate is a town hall format scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami.
Moderator Chris Wallace struggled to gain control of the 90-minute debate in Cleveland because of frequent interruptions, primarily by Trump.
Wallace, of Fox News, pleaded for a more orderly debate, at one point looking at Trump and saying, “the country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions. I’m appealing to you, sir, to do that.”
“Ask him, too,” Trump said.
“Well, frankly, you’ve been doing more interrupting than he has,” Wallace said.
Biden on Wednesday called the debate “a national embarrassment.” But despite some suggestions that the final two presidential encounters be canceled, both campaigns said they expected their candidate to attend.
ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, who moderated one of the three debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, said Wallace was put in nearly an impossible situation. Faced with the same behavior, she said she might have called a full stop to the debate for a moment to recalibrate.
She never had the option, technically, to cut off the microphone of a candidate four years ago, she said. It also wasn’t in the rules that were agreed to in advance by the candidates and commission.
“To say, ‘he’s not going to follow the rules so we aren’t, either?’ It’s an unprecedented situation,” Raddatz said. “That was so out of control.”
Twitter was ablaze with criticism for Wallace early in the debate for losing control of the proceedings. That was illustrated by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who tweeted “what is Chris Wallace doing? He has no control over the debate. He asks a question and let’s Trump continue yelling. This is a disgrace.”
By the time he was on “Morning Joe” the next morning, Scarborough had cooled off. He called on the debate commission to act.
“While it was extraordinarily frustrating, I think all of us need to walk a mile in his shoes before saying the morning after, ‘he could have done this, he could have done that,’” Scarborough said.
Some of the president’s supporters felt that Wallace was too hard on their candidate. Trump himself suggested he was also debating Wallace, “but that’s no surprise.”
Wallace even got some criticism from opinion personalities on his own network. “Trump is debating the moderator and Biden,” prime-time host Laura Ingraham tweeted during the debate.
Another Fox colleague, Geraldo Rivera, expressed more sympathy.
“The guy signed up to moderate a debate and he ended up trying to referee a knife fight,” he said.
Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” was not immediately made available for comment by Fox.
Wallace is the only presidential debate moderator this cycle with prior experience, after receiving praise for handling the final Clinton-Trump debate in 2016. The other two moderators are Steve Scully of C-SPAN and Kristen Welker of NBC News.
Scully moderates the Miami debate, which will be a town hall format where citizens get to ask questions. That format may make interruptions more difficult.
“Having prepared for these, the town hall is a completely different event in the debate Olympics,” tweeted David Plouffe, an adviser to former President Barack Obama. “If Trump brings the same nastiness to Florida, it will be doubly painful to watch but it will be doubly painful for him politically.”
The Nielsen company’s estimate on how many people watched Tuesday’s debate was expected later Wednesday.
(AP)