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.—“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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