June 17, 2024
Biden vs Trump. We are now just 10 days away from the first presidential debate of this incredibly important election year.
And we now know the ground rules that these two men have agreed to follow.
As you know the first presidential debate will be hosted by CNN next Thursday, June 27th at 9 pm eastern. No RFI Jr. did not qualify for this debate – and I’ll explain why in a second but first…
I think the most important thing that both the Trump and Biden campaigns have agreed to is – muted microphones. According to the agreement microphones will be muted throughout the debate except they will be turned on for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. This will take away the opportunity for the candidates to talk over each other.
Each candidate will be allowed two minutes to answer each question posed by the moderators. Those answers will be followed by a one-minute rebuttal and another 1-minute response to the rebuttal. Plus one-extra minute that can be used if necessary. There will be visible red lights when each candidate has exhausted his time.
There will be no opening statement from either candidate but each man will be allowed a two-minute closing statement.
The Biden and Trump campaigns have also agreed that this debate will be 90-minutes long. There will only be two commercial breaks and campaign staff cannot interact with their candidate during those breaks.
Both campaigns have agreed to appear at a uniform podium. Whether they stand at the left podium or the right podium will be determined by a coin flip. Each candidate will be given a pen, a notepad and a bottle of water. There will be no props or written notes allowed on stage.
And there will be no studio audience. That may change for the other debate in September but for this debate the Trump and Biden campaign has agreed there should be no spectators in the audience.
So why is RFK Jr. not going to be there. Well – he didn’t meet all the requirements. There are a lot of requirements Kennedy does meet – he meets the constitutional requirements, he meets the polling requirements but in order to be on this stage the candidate must also appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency. So far – Kennedy is only on the ballot in six states which if he wins all six of those he would only be eligible for 89 electoral college votes.
Anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will serve as moderators and you’ll be able to watch the debate of course on CNN and if you don’t have a cable log in, you can stream it free on cnn-dot.com.
