CNN Has a Plan for Keeping Donald Trump From Hijacking Thursday’s Debate. There’s Reason to Worry. (2024)

For Thursday’s presidential debate, CNN’s got rules. There will be no live audience. The candidates will not be allowed to consult notes or their advisers. They will have two minutes to respond to questions, followed by one-minute rebuttals and responses to rebuttals. There are no opening statements and no props allowed. Most importantly, the candidates’ microphones will be muted—yes, muted—when they’re not speaking.

Will all those rules keep this exercise on the rails? CNN has said that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” (emphasis mine).

But it remains to be seen what that means. If Trump begins stalking the stage menacingly or either candidate starts interrupting (or even yelling), will Tapper and Bash open up a trapdoor? Whip out a lasso or old-timey shepherd’s crook to yank the candidates offstage? Pull a fire alarm?

And there’s no plan for live fact-checking. How will any falsehoods be curtailed?

There’s a lot at stake, particularly for CNN. Last May, the network held a live town-hall event in New Hampshire with Trump that was widely criticized after Trump used the opportunity to spew lies, smear enemies, and insult the moderator, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. The crowd, made up of local Republican voters, was hooting, jeering, and laughing. CNN very visibly lost control of the room—and of any assertion over the facts.

The event roiled the network, to the point where prominent journalists and commentators were forced to address the backlash on air. (Anderson Cooper, defending the town hall, said to viewers: “You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?”) The town hall also proved to be the last straw for CNN’s CEO Chris Licht, who was fired a month later.

This week’s debate is meant to be a much more muted affair: CNN’s new chairman, Mark Thompson, reportedly drew inspiration for the format from the 1960 Kennedy–Nixon debates. And there’s a big change to how the debate has been organized.

Both campaigns had previously expressed frustration with the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit that has organized presidential debates since the 1980s. Republicans in particular had accused the commission of being biased toward Democrats. (Not that they won’t accuse CNN of the same: Some GOPers have already started saying that the network has “rigged” the debate.)

So, the two political parties discussed having debates outside the commission’s control. The Biden campaign publicly put out a proposal, which included the following terms: that the two parties come to an agreement about the network hosts and the rules; the network choose moderators from its own payroll; the moderators stick with firm time limits and equal speaking time; and the microphones be controlled.

Trump, who may have had to agree to these terms to appear overly confident, would clearly have preferred a live audience. But forcing moderators to act like substitute teachers trying to keep a classroom in order has been, well, not particularly conducive to anyone’s goals. And it lets Trump be a giant bully onstage.

In that sense, the lack of an audience will likely help Biden. As will the muted mics, given that his campaign’s great concern is probably that Biden come across as neither elderly nor senile. He’ll likely do much better without an aggressive TV personality overpowering him, flustering him, or interrupting his train of thought. Similarly, the format could hurt Trump, given that he won’t be able to play to his strengths by working the audience and playing the alpha male.

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It’s possible, of course, that this could backfire for Biden, that the stripped-down environment might prevent Trump from doing something off-puttingly erratic (remember him hovering behind Hillary Clinton?), so much so that some voters may be relieved by a more “presidential” Trump and take it as an excuse to ignore his more uncouth behavior.

Still, the big question of the night is: Will CNN be able to keep things civil? Cutting the mics will certainly help, but presumably, the moderators won’t be able to physically restrain Trump from, say, wandering up and talking into Biden’s microphone. Less dramatically, a candidate’s mic might still pick up another candidate’s shouting. Plus, the reality is, they’ll be in the same room. Trump yelling at Biden, calling him crooked or sleepy or accusing him of being on drugs, might prove distracting enough to derail the debate, even if viewers at home can’t hear it. CNN may have removed the unpredictability of a live studio audience, but it can’t remove the unpredictability of Donald Trump.