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Trump-Biden debate: Candidates’ mics to be muted at the start of each segment
The decision was announced by the US commission on presidential debates. The in-person face-off is scheduled for Friday morning, India time, at Belmont University in Nashville
New rules have been announced for the final presidential debate between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden that will see the opponent’s microphone muted during the initial comments of every segment in order to allow the candidates uninterrupted speaking time.
The decision was announced by the US commission on presidential debates. The in-person face-off is scheduled for Friday morning, India time, at Belmont University in Nashville.
At the debate, Trump and Biden will get two minutes each to answer, without interruptions, the opening question of each of the six 15-minute segments. “The only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules,” the commission said.
Both the microphones, however, will remain open for follow-up questions or exchanges between them.
The opening presidential debate had devolved into a shouting match. Trump and Biden had repeatedly interrupted each other and talked over each other. The second scheduled debate was cancelled after Trump pulled out when it was turned into a virtual event forced by the US president’s Covid-19 illness.
Now recovered, Trump has appeared eager to take on Biden and will seek to change the course of the race that has seen him trailing by double digits in some polls.
On Monday, the US president opened up a new line of attack against Biden, accusing the Democrat of listening to Dr Anthony Fauci, the top American epidemiologist, suggesting that it wasn’t the right thing to do.
“You know, Biden wants to lock it down,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Prescott, Arizona, referring to the debate on the need for more curbs to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump added, seeking to mock Biden, “He wants to listen to Dr Fauci. He wants to listen to Dr Fauci.”
Biden, who has been calling for the Trump administration to listen to Dr Fauci, welcomed the charge with a one-word tweet: “…yes”.
Dr Fauci, when asked to respond to Trump’s earlier charge that he was a “disaster”, cited the 1972 crime film, The Godfather, to say “Nothing personal, strictly business” – in a reference to actor Al Pacino in the protagonist Michael Corleone’s role arguing to volunteer to kill two men who tried to kill his father.
Failing to stop the spread of Covid-19, which has killed more than 218,000 Americans and infection more than 8 million, and frustrated by the shadow it has cast on his re-election chances, the American president has indiscriminately attacked all his targets.
He has questioned the science behind mitigation measures, argued that face masks are not as effective as they are said to be, and has attacked public health officials who have refused to toe his line.
During a conference call with his campaign staff earlier on Monday, Trump had said, “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, these people - these people that have gotten it wrong. Fauci is a nice guy, he’s been here for 500 years; he called every one of them wrong. Fauci is a disaster. I mean, this guy, if I listened to him, we would have 500,000 deaths.”
Trump was ticked off reportedly at a Sunday interview in which Dr Fauci had said that he was not surprised when the US president contracted the disease because of a super-spreader event that the White house had hosted recently to announce Trump’s pick for a Supreme Court judge.
Trump’s handling of the pandemic is a key issue in the 2020 White House race with 57.5% of Americans disapproving of it, according to the FiveThirtyEight weighted average of polls – one of the reasons why he trails Biden in national polls.
