Commission Announces Debate Moderators for 2016 Election
Trump has yet to commit to the debates, though.
Everyone can calm down now because the Commission on Presidential Debates have announced the moderators for the president and vice president debates.
The commission chose NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, and ABC’s Martha Raddatz for the presidential debates. CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano will moderate the vice president debate on October 4.
Raddatz is an interesting choice since she caused a bit of a controversy before and during the vice president debate in 2012 between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden. The Daily Caller reported that President Barack Obama attended the wedding of Raddatz and her ex-husband Julius Genachowski since he attended Harvard with the groom. Obama also appointed Genachowski head of the Federal Communications Commission.
Then, during the debate, conservatives took to Twitter to criticize Raddatz’s behavior, claiming that she allowed Biden to walk all over her. Conservatives noted that Raddazt and Biden ganged up on Ryan and allowed Biden to cutoff Ryan, but did not allow Ryan “to derail Biden.”
Raddatz will join Anderson on October 9 at Washington University in St. Louis for a “town hall-style debate.”
Holt will take on the first debate on September 26. GOP nominee Donald Trump recently told Hugh Hewitt that the anchor “is a good guy.” But that’s the only moderator he’s ever praised.
The third and final debate belongs to Wallace on October 19 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
The vice president debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine will take place on October 4.
The commission said:
“These journalists bring extensive experience to the job of moderating, and understand the importance of using expanded time periods effectively,” Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. and Michael D. McCurry, co-chairs of the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, said in the statement announcing the moderators.
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“The formats chosen for this year’s debates are designed to build on the formats introduced in 2012, which focused big blocks of time on major domestic and foreign topics,” Fahrenkopf and McCurry said in the release. “We are grateful for their willingness to moderate, and confident that the public will learn more about the candidates and the issues as a result.”
Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has committed to the debates, but not Trump. He said he did not like the dates since two of them conflict with NFL primetime games and wanted to wait for the moderators announcement:
“I would say that certain moderators would be unacceptable, absolutely,” he added.
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Comments
Really. Again. There are no qualified, impartial persons who could be moderators? Really?!
No. Even Wallace can’t be trusted.
What do you expect from the GOPe, bravery, victory and integrity instead of McConnell, Ryan and boehner?
Why not just pick Bill Clinton and Charles Schumer to moderate?
What a bunch of corrupt losers.
If Trump does not win, nothing can save the GOP from going extinct. If it does, good riddance.
I’m surprised the MSM Commission did not select Brian Williams and Dan Rather to moderate the debates for their moral and unbiased outlook on all things political.
What, no Candy Crowley?!
Candy Crowley, Brian Williams, Dan Rather and Joe Scarborough. The leftists dream team.
not acceptable – they all lean left or worse. where are those that lean right if no one is available who is impartial?
Who needs moderators, anyway? Just program some electronic timers (which cannot argue with the candidates), and let the candidates debate each other. If they exceed their time limit egregiously, shut off the mic.
Give each a 2 minute opening and a 2 minute closing, then flip a coin for who asks the first question, then go in turns.
It would be a lot more informative to the voters than the current format with all the “gotcha” crap from these democrat operatives with a byline, oops I mean “journalists” in the way.
You could and should have standard questions that are asked of the candidate, but they should be published well ahead of time.
What would be wrong with having the debates on radio with no audience at all?To Hell with the showbiz
You don’t understand. The purpose of these “debates” is to sell advertising.
Well having rattits or whatever her name is, is typical of the left leaning “commission”.
New debate rule for moderators, they can ask the questions other than that they keep their pie holes shut.
In Greek mythology, harpies were vicious and cruel creatures sent by angry gods to torment and punish those that they despised. However they’re no longer needed today now that Martha Raddatz has taken over that responsibility.
Any obvious bias will work in Trump’s favor and he has taken advantage of things like this before. At the least he can make campaign ads with clips, leaning further on his “rigged” theme.
I’m curious to see how Trump reacts to this. Especially the schedule against the NFL.
As for the moderators, it won’t be the first time he went into the lion’s den.
AKA “ex-wives.”
This keeps happening because there are no consequences. The Republicans don’t do anything about it and the Democrat most certainly won’t do anything about it because every time this happens it helps them.
Trump’s challenge is that whatever the origin of the moderators, he’s going to be up against two opponents. Hillary and the moderator will be on the same side, and he’ll have to take them both on at once. That’s just the way it is, and he’ll have to prepare for it. There’ll be little excuse for getting blindsided like Romney this time around.
Hillary is a known quantity. Weak on theory despite press efforts to puff her up as some sort of policy super-wonk, a slow and utterly unoriginal thinker who will fall back on her old tropes whenever challenged, and a petulant termagant with propensities toward violence when frustrated (though I think Trump’s Secret Service detail can be trusted to ensure that there are no lamps or ashtrays within Hillary’s reach). Unless Trump is sound asleep, it’ll be a slaughter; we’re talking the Coliseum, lions vs. Christians here. Good TV, but incompetent politics.
The moderator? Now that the mods have been identified, oppo research can get to work on ways for Trump to counterattack them, too. Like a Noh performance, there’s a limited selection of wooden masks they can wear and lines they can recite, and almost no danger that they’ll come up with anything new. The D’rats are not the party of new ideas.
So, a lot of work for Trump, certainly, but at least so far he’s been energetic enough to handle two at a time.
But, something’s seriously wrong here. The D’rats are disgusting, treacherous, crooked, corrupt, dishonest, and vile, but not entirely stupid. They know perfectly well that unless they’re counting on the sympathy vote—with Hillary having a spectacular medical episode or suffering a disabling accident on stage—she’s toast. Can they risk relying on the mods to fend off the full energy of Hurricane Donald while their candidate stands there like a carved figurehead? Or can they “fix” it by having their sycophantic Alphabet Networks just declare Hillary the winner? The networks don’t control news access like they did in the good ol’ days. The situation for the D’rats is perilous, and for the Clintons it’s desperate; the whole raison d’être of the Clinton cash-for-influence machine evaporates when Hillary loses and the Clintons are frozen out of Federal government for the foreseeable future.
So … the Party can’t let debates happen.
They’ll have to come up with something; an East Coast power failure, a yuugggee terrorist attack, a little Reichtag fire at the studio, anything to make a personal encounter go away. And they obviously can’t put Candidate Huma up there, even though she’s the clear choice to play the role of Edith Wilson when acting hubby Hillary slips into a state of terminal confusion right after Inauguration. That plan, obviously, can’t be made official, no matter how inevitable it may be.
So … it stands to reason that they’re up to something suitably underhanded.
Maybe this is once where Trumps attitude can actually help, since I wouldn’t put it past him to ask an overzealous moderator if he is debating Hillary or them. He might even tell them to shut up and let him finish if they interrupt him, lol.
Well its apparent after his speech in Phoenix that Trump is past pivoting and will just pretty much let it all hang out. So, my guess his response to it all will be broadsides on Clinton where he ignores the format, and moderator at times, and will probably have a couple asides where he bitches out the moderators, the questions, and the format. This will be similar to the, which was it, CNBC moderated debate in the primaries where all of the candidates ripped the moderators but now he’ll be alone so it will look more petulant. Grandma Pickles will be propped up at every stumble and fed only underhand softballs. She will ‘endeavor to persevere’. Remember, she’s going to shift the focus from Wall Street to Main Street and break up those meanie big banks funded by racist billionaires and reach out to the summer homeless.
If her catheter doesn’t pop out as she tries to walk.