On Thursday, however, CNN will probably receive either the blame or the praise. For the first time since 1960, one network will be organizing, producing and operating a presidential general-election debate — “a great responsibility that we take quite seriously,” said CNN political director David Chalian.
“The pressure is on CNN to make this a good debate for the voters and for their viewers,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University’s School of Communication.
The structure of the debate will feel dramatically different from what viewers have become accustomed to: For one thing, the network decided against having a studio audience. Perhaps more significantly, CNN will turn off a candidate’s microphone when it’s not his turn to talk, so as to prevent crosstalk that could sully the program for viewers.
CNN set these terms for the debate, and the candidates agreed to them when they signed on. “The goal was to make sure we are moderating a debate between these two candidates who can be heard in their two different visions by the American people at home watching,” Chalian said.
Or, as Lukasiewicz, a former NBC News executive, put it: “What I think they’re trying to avoid is the disaster that was the Chris Wallace debate last cycle.”
But even within the network, there’s skepticism that Trump will accept the microphone limitation.
“I suspect he’ll just keep talking even if the mic has been muted,” CNN anchor Jim Acosta said on television last week. His panelist, Republican strategist Jim Schultz, agreed.
“I think he blows right through that stop sign,” Schultz said. “… The more they try to mute him, the more problems they’re going to have, right?”
(Here, Acosta pointed out that Biden’s microphone could pick up Trump, or vice versa, though it’s unclear — even to CNN’s Chalian — if viewers would be able to make out what he might be saying.)
Already, the Trump campaign has telegraphed a plan to attack the credibility of the two moderators, veteran anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. On Monday, anchor Kasie Hunt abruptly ended an interview with Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt after she accused the two journalists of bias. That led to CNN releasing a statement defending their credibility, an auspicious start to the week.
As former moderators know all too well, it’s almost impossible to avoid taking flak — from both the public and the campaigns. USA Today journalist Susan Page was criticized after she moderated a 2020 vice-presidential debate for allowing the candidates to exceed their allotted time to talk and for not asking enough follow-up questions.
“It’s an honor. It’s a privilege. You do your best, and people are going to criticize you,” Page said. “That’s just part of how it works.”
Even before the first candidate has taken the stage, some have questioned whether the moderators will sufficiently press Trump on his denial of the 2020 election results, a topic the former president will probably bring up.
Declaration for American Democracy, a coalition of advocacy groups such as Common Cause and the Sierra Club, sent a letter to CNN brass late last week urging the network’s moderators to ask questions about American democracy and to correct election misinformation.
“It is also essential that the debate moderators challenge falsehoods relating to U.S. elections that may emerge throughout the debate,” the group wrote in the letter, which was provided to The Washington Post. “We urge you to ask serious questions about where the candidates stand on the threats facing U.S. democracy, and to encourage them to share their positions clearly on issues regarding the integrity of U.S. elections.”
When asked about the difficulties of moderating an event featuring Trump, Chalian would not go into specifics. But he said a presidential debate is “not the ideal venue” for live fact-checking. Instead, the goal for the moderators is to facilitate a conversation between the two candidates, he said.
However, “if there is some egregious mistruth put forward, Jake and Dana certainly have the ability to quickly correct the record and move on,” he added.
CNN did not make Tapper and Bash available for interviews.
“They’re serious people. They know the issues,” Page said. “They’ve covered politics, and they’ve moderated debates, so I think they’ll be great.”
CNN knows all too well how challenging it can be to have a fact-based, substantive conversation with the former president.
In May 2023, Trump both embraced election denialism and taunted CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, at a town hall event that outraged network staffers and contributed to the ouster of the network’s chief executive, Chris Licht.
On that night, Trump played to a crowd that seemed to be heavily Republican-leaning. This time around, he will be speaking to an empty room, which Lukasiewicz predicted will force the candidates to be more substantive and less performative in their answers.
“Laugh lines don’t work if nobody’s laughing,” he said.
Either way, the debate will surely provide a ratings boost for CNN — which has struggled to attract the audience it drew during the news boom of the Trump administration. However, CNN agreed to let other networks broadcast its feed of the event as well, meaning Thursday’s potentially huge audience — 73.1 million people watched the first 2020 debate — will be split up among networks such as NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News and MSNBC.
That’s one concession to the old way of doing things. Since 1987, all presidential and vice-presidential debates have been hosted and organized by the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates, which shared the broadcast feed with all news networks — until this year, when both campaigns decided to bypass that process and schedule debates with media companies directly.
In September, ABC News will host a second Biden-Trump debate. The Biden campaign accepted CBS’s invitation for a vice-presidential debate, while the Trump campaign agreed to participate in one hosted by Fox News, but neither event has been confirmed.
Lukasiewicz, who produced debate coverage for NBC, said the CNN debate could become a model for future debates — if it’s successful.
Television networks, he said, have more leeway than the tradition-bound Commission on Presidential Debates to craft compelling programs. Specifically, he predicted that CNN’s moderators will have more freedom to push back on the candidates than previous debate moderators.
Before the CNN and ABC debates were announced last month, there was plenty of skepticism about whether Biden and Trump would even debate at all.
Said Page, “Whatever the flaws, and whatever people are saying afterward, I’m really glad it’s happening.”
As for her advice for the CNN co-hosts, she offered only two words: “Good luck.”
“They’ll do their best,” she said. “That’s what we ask.”
