CNN anchor Chris Wallace said Wednesday that not having an audience present for the CNN presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump will provide a “cleaner” experience for the candidates and the viewers watching. at home.
Biden and Trump reached an agreement Wednesday on two presidential debates that will pit the major parties’ presumptive nominees in a head-to-head battle on national television. CNN announced it will hold a debate on June 27th, and ABC will hold a debate on September 10th.
Wallace, who has moderated two presidential debates, said on CNN that he thinks the audience’s effect on the candidates is largely “exaggerated” but expressed support for the decision not to have anyone present at the June debate.
“It’s very subdued,” Wallace said of the debate staged on stage. “No one is paying attention or playing to the fans. Now, yes, sometimes the crowd intervened, and you would have to, as a moderator, try to get them to be quiet.”
“I think it’s better without crowds. I’ve felt this way for a while now,” she added.
Wallace noted that the 1960s debates between former presidents Kennedy and Nixon had no crowds and took place only in a television studio.
“I think it will make the experience cleaner and purer,” Wallace said. “But in terms of candidates, I don’t think it makes much of a difference, because you’re so focused on what you’re saying, what the other guy is about to say and what the moderator is going to ask, that you’re not sitting there playing for the crowd as if it were a rally.”
Wallace hosted a 2020 presidential debate between Trump and Biden, which was intended to maintain an open discussion between the two candidates, but which ended up becoming very frantic and undisciplined. Wallace, who was then a Fox News anchor, later described the debate as “a mess” and noted that Trump interrupted them more than 100 times that night.
Asked on Wednesday what the best approach would be for whoever ends up moderating the debate, Wallace raised the prospect of “when it’s not your time, when you’re not speaking, your microphone will be cut off.”
“The problem is when you have, as you saw in that debate, a free-flowing conversation, it’s not like, ‘I have two minutes to talk and then you have two minutes,’” Wallace said. “It’s very difficult to turn the microphone on and off because you’re hoping to get them involved.”
Before the 2020 presidential election, Trump frequently attacked Wallace, and their feud came to a head when Wallace condemned Trump’s premature and incorrect claim to have won the 2020 election, as he vowed to take the matter to the Supreme Court to stop votes from being counted. .
On the Wednesday after the election, before the results were counted, the then-Fox News anchor called the race an “extremely flammable situation,” adding that “the president just threw a match into it.”
“He didn’t win these states, no one is saying he won these states. The states didn’t say he won,” he said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
