By Chris Cillizza, CNN’s former top political analyst, broke down the recently released presidential debate rules and it’s not good news for Donald Trump, in his opinion.
The first 2024 presidential debate between Biden and Trump will occur on June 27 and be broadcast and streamed exclusively by CNN. It will also not include independent candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., who recently announced a lawsuit against the two major candidates for excluding him from the broadcast.
The Daily Caller reported that Cillizza recently explained how his former employer has arranged debate rules to help Joe Biden.
Cillizza started off by saying the muted microphones will obviously benefit Biden. CNN has not explicitly stated whether Tapper and Bash will be in charge of the muting, but the network did state that moderators “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure civilized discussion.”
“I don’t love it from a debate perspective, but from a who does this benefit perspective, it clearly benefits Biden,” he said. “Because if you go back and look at the debates they had, they had two in 2020 between Biden and Trump. Trump just talks and talks and talks and talks, and that’s true in 2016 too. Like he just over and over and over and over again just talks. He interrupts, he bullies. You know, in 2020 Biden said, ‘Hey man, why don’t you just shut up?’”
“That was actually probably the most memorable moment of the debate, which probably wouldn’t happen this time around with the muted mics,” Cillizza continued. “But regardless, I do think it helps Biden because I think Trump just tries to get you off your pace, off your rhythm, off your game, right? Just by talking and talking and talking, talking. So that’s rule one, benefit Biden one.”
The former CNN analyst said the two commercial breaks during the debate will also benefit the president.
“He is older, I know it’s only three and a half years older, but I do think he struggles more with these live performance kind of things than does Trump,” Cillizza continued. “So you can’t interact with your campaign or advisers in any way during the breaks, but you can just sort of … I’m not on live TV at this second and I don’t need to watch what I’m saying every second. I can kind of regroup, figure out what my message should be, how have I done? So I think that’s a good thing for Biden. I think he benefits from a little breather within. So that’s two rules and two good things for Biden.”
He also claims that the lack of a studio audience will help Biden because Trump supporters tend to be more enthusiastic than supporters of the Democratic president.
Cillizza later took to Twitter and said that after thinking about it more, he was surprised that Team Trump would agree to the setup.
The rules for the CNN debate:
1. Mics cut off when not your turn to speak: Advantage Biden
2. No live audience: Advantage Biden
3. Two commercial breaks: Advantage Biden
4. No pre-written notes: Advantage Trump
Surprised Trump team agreed to these rules honestly…
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) June 17, 2024
Last month, Trump announced at a rally that he also agreed to “sit at a table” during the debate with Biden despite Trump preferring to stand at a podium.
“I hear now we’re sitting at tables. I don’t want to sit at a table,” the 77-year-old former president told the “Cats & Cosby Show.”
“I said, ‘No, let’s stand.’ But they want to sit at a table,” Trump said. “So we’ll be sitting at a table as opposed to doing it the way you should be, in my opinion, in a debate.”
“But they have [Biden] sitting at a table, so that’s not so good,” Trump said, calling the seated debate format “one of the many” requests the Biden campaign insisted on.
“But I agree to their requests because I want to debate him,” the former president told Catsimatidis and Cosby, noting that he intends to press Biden on the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“If [Biden] gets through the debate, they’ll say it was brilliant,” Trump argued.
The president’s ability to operate on his own, especially while standing, became a topic of conversation after video revealed that during a fundraiser with Barack Obama, the 44th president had to help his former vice president off the stage by holding his hand.
Biden freezes before Obama grabs his arm and leads him off stage. Yikes! 😳 pic.twitter.com/nCgAGitoQ6
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 16, 2024
Tensions between the two campaigns have increased over the past month. CNN reported that “The Biden campaign on Monday debuted a new ad that will air in battleground states that blasts the presumptive Republican nominee as a felon who only cares about himself. The strategy appears to resolve a debate among Democrats about how overtly they should highlight the ex-president’s legal woes in a neck and neck White House race.
The new front in the 2024 campaign opened up after Trump sought to win votes among Black Americans, a traditional Democratic power base where the ex-president is trying to make inroads despite his tarnished personal history on race. This comes as Republicans embrace their presumptive nominee despite his conviction and bid to overturn the 2020 election result, going all in on Trump as they seek to win back the White House and the Senate and keep the House.
Biden’s new ad zeroes in directly on the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money trial and his huge loss in a civil fraud case to strike a sharp contrast with Biden’s character. As the ex-president’s mug shot flashes on screen, a narrator says: “This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who is fighting for your family.” The ad marks the Biden campaign’s most explicit strategic use so far of Trump’s legal woes in a campaign message.
Trump’s campaign responded by blasting the hush money trial as “election interference” and highlighted polls showing the former president’s strength in swing states.”
“The contrast between President Trump’s strength and success versus Crooked Joe Biden’s weakness, failures, and dishonesty will be made clear on the debate stage next week,” Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokesperson, wrote in a response on Twitter.
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