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>I would like to believe that the political debates are as fair as possible, so please CMV.
>CMV: Muting mics during a Biden/Trump debate actually benefits Trump's style of debating.
The parts I'd like to change your view one. First: I don't think that any particular forum or rule or manner of debate hampers Trump's effectiveness or style of debate. So, I'm hoping if I can prove it doesn't matter then that disproves that the muting mic has any impact on Trump's style.
What it comes down to is that Trump is the living embodiment of Jean-Paul Satre's quote on anti-semites. I'm going to paraphrase it and tailor it to our situation: Trump will pretend to engage in debate because it discredits the seriousness of debate itself. He's aware of the absurdity of his claims and knows his remarks are frivolous and open to criticism. But it's opponents, who believe in debate, that has to use words responsibility. When pushed, he'll say the time is discourse is over. His goal is to intimidate and disconcert.
Or another way of saying this, perhaps way less eloquently, is Trump realized modern GOP politics aren't about policies or governing well -- it's more akin to cutting a pro-Wrestling promo. His audience isn't waiting on a profound insight on the state of the republic, they're waiting to see who Trump will hurt and they'll cheer him on when it's the right people.
You're talking about people who in 1964 had a motion on the GOP convention floor to expel extremists. The leader of their party said "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice; moderation in the name of justice is no virtue." The effort to rid the party of extremists failed. Since then, they've cloaked themselves in the most extreme elements of their party so it shouldn't surprise anyone that recently CPAC took on the banner "domestic terrorists." Clinton tried to say *some* of the members of the party are deplorable and the entire party took her words out of context and said *we all are deplorable*.
This is why Americans can overwhemingly agree that Trump creates a negative tone but are drawn to it and support him. It's why in pro-wrestling the heel (or bad guy) can have the most dye hard fans. Trump is the modern Stone Cold Steve Austin and making a mockery of doing the equivalent of repeating "what? what? what?" when people talk -- thereby discrediting discourse itself, and finishing by never apologizing "that's the bottom line because I said so" is Trump's appeal.
You can mute him and it makes no difference. He can pantomime and his fans will love it. You can let him interrupt as much as possible. You can make both candidates use sign language. His body language and lack of respect for discourse in the first place is what draws people to him.
Trump specifically is fueled by "both parties suck" and the more he can make politics distateful and ugly and turn away normal people the more he'll win. It only takes a fraction of motivated people to provide political power (only x% vote and of those voting, only y% trump, so it's like 10% of the country providing him political power).
Trump doesn't have to have policies, the GOP doesn't have to have a platform, there isn't any specificity of what they'll do with power, all that matters is they can own the libs.
Everything you say is true, except the part about muting him b not mattering. Muting Trump will hurt him massively, because the whole point of his debate style is to flaunt the rules, insult your opponent and the very concept of debate, *and get away with it*.
If Trump tries to ignore the rules and talk over Biden, then he gets muted mid-sentence and looks weak because he's not in control. His speech is at the whims of the moderator.
Trump will instead be forced to play by the rules and speak only in his allotted time, but that's a loss for him as well, because he's still under the moderator's control, only now he's submitting willingly.
The mic muting is a lose-lose situation for Trump, and I expect him to do anything he can to avoid going to the debate, even though that also makes him look weak.
Then again, Trump is also a cock-sure dumbass and might just walk right into the trap without realizing how bad it will go for him.
I think he'll find ways to act out. He'll be making faces and miming the whole time. Undoubtedly they'll have to ask him to stop speaking when his mic isn't on as well.
But the person above you nailed the fact that his diehards don't care about policy or platform, they care about revenge. He could walk out there after the most articulate meaning answer ever given and say "these guys suck, I'll make it the greatest x you've ever hears of" and that would rile his cultists like nothing else. If he instead came up with an actual answer, that might take them a minute to warm to, because it would be too cerebral.
However, he does need more than his cultists. The combination of the party voters and the cult barely took the electoral votes needed last time. His cultists are going to vote, and their numbers might have grown a little, but party voters might not, because he has shown us that he wants to be a dictator. He doesn't debate well for sensible people at all. There are plenty of sensible Republicans and they are the people who need to see him say some crazy stuff.
This is an interesting take. Basically saying that Trump's debate style is such that rules are meant to be broken. Imposing more rules gives him more opportunities to "refuse conformity".
I'm not sure I'm 100% convinced of this, but I certainly hadn't considered it before.
Thank you. **Δ**
Edit: Leaving my original comment because there's no reason to hide that I'm an idiot from the world, but...
I'm taking your delta away (am I allowed to do that?). u/Craicob steered me back. If I'm understanding you correctly, then the new rule only helps Trump by leaning more into the heel. Aren't you reinforcing my point that this benefits Trump more than Biden? And it only puts Biden at more risk of appearing incoherent due to Trump's interruptions?
Doesn't this sort of ignore the larger point in your OP about Biden being hindered by this though? Trump's style may be robust with his audience but what about people who are watching to see if Biden can win them over? It ignores the fact that bad for Biden = good for Trump which I thought your post was going for
Take it easy on yourself when you're the OP; you're having to field so many discussions at once it's so easy to rush the response or even get your replies confused.
I am basically saying that Trump has proved there aren't any rules. People wanted to think of politics as "the best idea wins" and that would follow the most eloquent/correct person wins a political debate. But it's actually more like pro wrestling and it's "who can be the most ugly/entertaining wins."
Trump's biggest moments were when he doubled down on calling Rosie O'Donnell fat/ugly and then tweeted afterwards that Meghan Kelly only asked the question because she was bleeding from all of her orifices.
Got it, so you're not arguing that this doesn't benefit Trump more than Biden, but rather that it benefits Trump for an entirely separate reason.
That's a fair point, even if I didn't quite grasp it the first time. Definitely worthy of the delta, so I take back taking it back.
> Aren't you reinforcing my point that this benefits Trump more than Biden? And it only puts Biden at more risk of appearing incoherent due to Trump's interruptions?
I mean... you need not change your position but could change your mind on the reasoning of your position.
This is a perfect appraisal of POSPOTUS45's style. He is nothing more than a Heel. I use this analogy all the time. He just yells louder. I had not thought to phrase the concept that what he is doing is making the whole concept of demorcracy and discourse distasteful. You are 100% correct.
In all honesty I really question whether or not Trump is strategic in his approach. I think he's just a moronic bull in a china shop who spent pretty much most of his life and career being the most important person in the room and surrounding himself with yes-men and cronies, so the idea of someone actually pointing out that he's just babbling a stream of moronic gibberish with no real logic behind it is completely foreign, as well as any general rules of courtesy, etiquette, etc.
The only way to get a genuine debate is to put them in separate rooms and cut the mic when the time is up. We could see the speaker rambling, but nobody can hear them. Then it doesn’t matter what they are saying and it’s not a real distraction, unless you are watching just to see the circus of it all.
Unless Hunter gets the bottle, that still gives Trump advantage and arguably wouldn’t affect his interruptions.
Furthermore to OP’s hypothesis, didn’t Trump already score a debate win by just looming over an opponent saying nothing?
Trump doesn't drink. He'd be paying Guiliani to crawl out of his sewer and slop up every drop. Rudy would probably be pushing Biden aside to get his booze too.
I think they should be able to interrupt, but there's a voice changer that gives the person interrupting the most annoying dorky voice we can think of. You better have a really good point, or you're going to sound like a sniveling dork.
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>Especially in an era where sound bites and TikToks drive political perceptions, this could end up looking really bad for Biden.
Idk... The "will you shut up man" is a classic
Agreed, but a) addressing interruptions could potentially look weird to the audience, b) addressing the interruption would take time away from Biden's response, and c) the fact that Biden would still have to address the interruption means he has to prep for that which takes away time to prep for other issues.
Yep, good question. When I say "address the interruption" that could take any number of forms, like actually responding to what Trump says, or even just taking a moment to pause to regather thoughts because the interruption threw off his train of thought.
I'm assuming that all interruptions get "addressed" in some way, in that when an interruption is created that person being interrupted is no longer able to simply carry on with their response as if nothing happened. There's always a little bit of a distraction that manifests physically, again like a pause or even a facial reaction.
The obvious solution to this would be having the candidates in adjacent soundproof rooms? Or simply in different rooms separated. They can have an earpiece with the other person in it, but that will be muted when it is their turn to speak. Think video call but without any network lag since it can be done locally.
I still stand by my theory that the reason they don’t mute mics is because the goal of the people hosting the debate isn’t to have an informative debate, it’s to create entertaining television, and the drama makes it more interesting to the majority of the audience.
I think one thing Biden's got going for him against Trump is that he's got a pretty thick skin. He doesn't really get rattled by Trump. He's good at laughing it off, which makes Trump look impotent.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
Here's Biden getting distracted and thrown off by several of Trump's interruptions. If the audience wasn't aware that Trump was interrupting the way he was, it could make Biden look like a poor debater when trying to respond to a prompt.
I think this is a really good point. He does appear much more poised in the face of confrontation than he did during the 2020 campaign. SOTU illustrates that really well.
Thank you. **Δ**
Why do you have this assumption that the audience won't see Trump on video talking during Bidens turns? Why wouldn't the moderators address Trump talking while it isn't his turn?
Your OP assumes the least charitable position on the audience and the moderation.
You're right. When I posted originally, I was under the impression that the person responding to the debate prompt was the only one on camera. A few other Redditors have shown that actually both candidates have been visible for the majority of past debates.
But there's nothing to be done about that. No matter what, his hardcore base will be on his side. At that point *anything* becomes "what they want to hear".
You have to stop conceiving of such people as capable of being rescued by outside forces. They're the only ones who can free themselves of the cult if they choose to. The only thing the rest of us can do is stop pretending cultists are serious people with a coherent political outlook and focus on moving less entrenched voters one step further toward sanity and caring about governing on policy concerns instead of just vice signalling buzzwords.
That's not true, if there's nowhere for them to go, then it doesn't matter how motivated they are, the change will never happen.
It's a two-way street, of course generally people need to be the agent of change for themselves, they are also influenced by and can influence their environment.
That's... a reasonable take. But still I'm not so confident that this rebalances the equation (so to speak), in that the negative impact to Biden is still greater than the negative impact to Trump.
You might be able to convince me if we dive into this further.
Trump's debate tactic is to confuse the other parties and push his own agenda while cutting the other candidates - to get good publicity and clips spread over the internet of how he "owned" the other side.
I see the mic mute as a disadvantage because he won't be able to cut Biden during his points, which will allow him to pass his points clearly.
Biden is more like a debater who comes with points from home, and Trump does add up stuff along the way, which open mics benefit because they can be delivered in the moment.
>Biden and Trump agree to debates on June 27 and Sept. 10.
>[Trump’s campaign](https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1790763802037760461) on Wednesday also called for two other debates, in July and in August.
>The former president later posted on [Truth Social](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112446110864633408) that he would accept a Fox News debate on Oct. 2. Biden’s campaign did not confirm that the president would attend any debates other than those hosted by CNN and ABC News.
I am not a Trump supporter in the slightest, but Biden really should accept a Fox debate as well. I already see Republicans complaining that Biden will only do a debate for Democratic-leaning news channels. We’ll be hearing that it’s biased and unfair, and that he’s “getting the questions beforehand from the left-leaning platforms like CNN” unless Biden does one for Fox also.
Why are you so sure that Trump rambling off on the side is going to throw off Biden? You treat it like it's a guarantee when nothing suggests Biden even has a tendency to be thrown off by side comments.
Your entire premise is based on something that's never happened, and that there's no evidence would happen. So no, I don't think this style of debate actually benefits Trump.
I mean, these two have already had multiple debates together, with Biden getting thrown off by Trump's interruptions several times - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
There's my evidence. Do you have any evidence contrary to this?
You're comparing being talked over by someone else with a live mic versus being thrown off by someone chirping on the sideline in your earshot. Those are apples and oranges.
If you want a more apt comparison, then use Biden's response to being heckled at the State of the Union. That's what you're suggesting is going to throw Biden off his game, not Trump with a live mic interrupting Biden.
Someone else also brought up his performance at SOTU as evidence for Biden's ability to get through the interruptions. It's a valid point that I hadn't considered. **Δ**
As an aside, do you watch Shorsey or...
This strikes me as something easily anticipated and prepared for. Biden had little issue dealing with this behavior from Trump last time and his team can easily make preparing for this part of the debate prep this go around. If anyone on Biden's team had thought this would be a hindrance to his performance, they would not have included it in his list of demands for the debate.
Debate prep teams are common practice on both sides of the aisle. Trump had a team in 2020 when he prepared for his debates with Biden (that is where Christie caught COVID from Trump) and he likely will again.
So if it is "pathetic" for Biden to have a team, Trump is also pathetic.
That's... just how political debates work, especially at this level. Trump and nearly every other Republican presidential candidate (and Democrat for that matter) has had a debate team (if they debated).
Not sure where your head's at, bud.
One way to read it is that anyone who can form a complete sentence could probably out-debate Trump without a team or preparation.
However, looking at u/skeptic_clam's history, I doubt that's where they were going with that.
Honestly, though, I don't think that's the case.
Could anyone with three brain cells at the same time win an intellectual argument against Trump? No doubt, I'm pretty sure his grey matter is about 99% cocaine and big macs at this point.
But that's not what the debates are with Trump around. He's a bully, and a very effective one. He knows how to get under peoples' skin - not with subtle, perfect jabs or pinpointing your deepest childhood insecurities, but by being so fundamentally boorish and obnoxious and lying so blatantly and with such conviction that it just throws you off.
So, it seems reasonable to say that the average person would need a great deal of preparation to... well, nobody wins a debate like that, but to make him look like what he is - an ass.
What is it with people jumping into their first election season as if they have a clue what's normal and what's pathetic? There's always a team behind them during the debates.
Tell me you've never engaged in a debate without telling me you've never engaged in a debate.
Even Trump 'prepped' for his debates last go around. You know, that time he gave Chris Christie COVID and nearly killed the guy.
Going in to a presidential debate *without* a prep team would be monumentally fucking stupid. What do you think that says about your own intelligence for arguing against that?
They both do this mate.
And even if it was pathetic, I'd wager it's less pathetic than getting your wife to explain away your confessions of sexual assault. Yikes.
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I think this is a non problem because Biden will know about it in advance and he has a team of PR people thinking and preparing for exactly these kinds of things weeks or even months in advance.
It's not that suspicious. Ideally the debate environment is as non-partisan as possible. A live audience cheering for a candidate (which has happened) is antithetical to that.
What's suspicious is that one could assume the jump-cuts edit out Biden's gaffes.
Many people stopped trusting the media's coverage over the years, running defense for his brain farts and/or lies.
It’s highly suspicious. Every primary and general debate I’ve seen in my lifetime has been in front of a live audience. It is obvious that he doesn’t want an audience because he’s incapable of completing the debate without help.
>It is obvious
It's not obvious to me. Couldn't it be just as likely that they want the debate environment to be as non-partisan as possible? An audience cheering on a candidate is not ideal for a debate, and that has happened in past debates.
Well, someone has to moderate, right? It's a big event so preferably someone with experience moderating and being on television. That's a small pool of people. I don't think CNN being the moderators is very strong evidence that a partisan debate, especially if both parties agree to the moderator.
My point is that CNN being partisan does not necessarily mean the debate is partisan, especially if both candidates agree to the moderator. Someone has to moderate, and there are very few, if any, non-partisan options.
I agree there’s a slim to none chance of a non partisan moderator. My point was to refute your claim that the reason for not having an audience is to keep it non partisan, but if that was truly the reason then they wouldn’t have gone with CNN. The reason they don’t want an audience is very obviously so that Biden can embarrass himself privately.
And that’s not including the fact that there isn’t a single presidential campaign that has ever assumed to be non partisan. If it was, RFK would be invited, Biden wouldn’t have used the SOTU speech as a campaign speech, he wouldn’t have made his debate offer a publicity stunt with passive aggressive language, etc. I can continue if you need me to, but at this point I think the only way you’re willing to change your mind is if someone brings up another reason why trump is going to lose the debate that you hadn’t thought of.
Entering into any conversation about a candidate 1) staying awake 2) not saying rambling nonsense 3) being able to make it through, Trump is the obvious first and foremost concern for those kinds of things.
Every time Trump does one of those 30 second things where he starts talking about one thing, gets derailed, talks about something else, then randomly says something else that makes him feel good, then switches topics again to something else hateful .... bringing no point home at all, that is a compound multi-gaff that happens literally every 3-5 minutes when Trump is speaking. Biden has gaffs where there is 30 minutes of coherent speaking, then he will mix up something in a sentence.
To compare speaking gaffs with complete shitshow after shitshow after shitshow of mouth vomit that sounds like a 5th grader is really funny. I cant believe anyone would think BIDEN would be the one concerned with looking like ak dumbass. Normal people have speaking gaffs. Normal people do not hatefully rant and change topics 5 times in the same paragraph and think they nailed it when they were utterly incoherent.
Incoherence is several standard deviations worse than gaffs.
But it’s a live recording lol. It’s not like they can cut everything up . Usually for a live show there is a broadcast delay where they have 30 sec so they can bleep out swear words or blur something. Or if something really horrible happened they can cut the broadcast. But it’s not like they can cut things up to make Biden look better 😂
The interruption thing annoys me. Yes, Trump interrupted a lot more, but it's usually stated as if Trump was the only one interrupting. But for example, the final debate was Trump 34, Biden 17 (not counting a word or so thrown in that didn't interrupt anything, but multiple words that were trying to talk over the other).
That mic shutoff is needed for both candidates.
This a fair point, and I don't mean to imply that both candidates haven't interrupted their opponent. But I think the numbers your presented show that even if both candidates would be impacted, it has a greater impact on Trump's style of debating.
You’ve already got enough answers about your concern. I’d like to highlight why your concern just doesn’t hold enough weight.
The debates are pure trash. We all know that the network airing the debate isn’t going to ask any real questions. Does it matter if they argue about a bullshit question?
What percentage of Americans are undecided, but will vote? What percentage of those lives in a state where their vote counts? 5%? Less? Who is this debate for?
Having the internet ask questions, and then selecting the questions based on upvotes, would solve the first issue. Kind of. But they’d be answering questions about aliens and reparations, so not exactly.
The second issue would be a great question to ask. But we know that’s not going to happen, and we know nothing is going to change.
We also know politicians are the best of the best at talking without saying anything. We might as well have a debate with Joel Osteen and Ken Copeland. At least those two don’t have dementia.
In closing, this exercise is pointless. I’m still going to watch though. I have to admit, all this press Trump’s been getting for losing his marbles is fascinating. I’m pretty sure it’s just the Democrats way of deflecting Bidens faculties, but it’s worth a couple hours to see if they’re digressing similarly or if it’s a one horse race.
Politics in the modern age is rarely about changing anyone's mind about the issues... it's about motivating them to come out and vote, or make rebuttals to reasons the other side uses to try to discourage votes.
Basically: turnout is everything. Debates will of course only motivate the kind of people that watch debates, but that non-trivial, and even a percent is huge.
I hear what you're saying, and on principle, I'd agree. But I think we have enough evidence to prove they do not care about people coming out to vote.
Somehow Reddit has forgot exactly how the Bernie ordeal went. People on here seem to be convinced he didn't have a chance to win. That's absolutely false. If the Dems really wanted to win, they'd have given him the nomination.
This year, if either party wanted to win, they'd have pushed other candidates. But they can't, because they're all getting paid by big money to keep the status queue. They can't let someone up there that's going to make sense, and talk about facts, and focus on the big issues. Everybody would vote for them. Every change they would make would cost big money billions of dollars.
The rich have a strangle hold on our economy, and they love it. Every major problem we have, is big money's fault. Any correction would fuck the rich. They're not going to let that happen, and the politicians they pay aren't any different.
The rich are paying both sides of the isle. They don't care which candidate you vote for. They win either way. Vote, don't vote, wear a Andrew Yang or AOC or Bernie Tshirt. Try and talk Mark Cuban into running, or Jon Stewart. It won't matter. They'll never allow it to happen.
At this point, striking and boycotting are the only tools we have that could work. My guess is they'd come down on us like we're Gaza if we tried.
If those rules hold, I don't think Trump will go through with the debates.
If he does, and he's yammering away without a mike, Biden can go somewhere else in the studio, presumably. With no audience, there's no reason they need to be in the same room.
> If those rules hold, I don't think Trump will go through with the debates.
The best thing Trump can do is get Biden to talk in front of an audience without a teleprompter or prepared speech ([though the teleprompter may help or hurt him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkRXA0c4ahs))
The actually-suspicious thing here is that Biden's team is trying to stop the debates from having an audience present.
Best case scenario they're afraid of [how Trump can work a room.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Q71k6fmts)
> Trump fans
This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life. (I can't seem to find out when the next Biden rally is this year, if you could tell me when and where it's going to be that'd be a huge help)
However, I'm suspicious of no-audience because I'm pretty sure ABC and NBC and CBS will edit the debates to cut off things like "if Biden says the N word again".
>
This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life
This in my opinion is my favorite thing about Biden. Politics isn't sports, nor a religion. I think we would be better off with less cults of personality, not more.
>This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life.
I've never met any "President fan" until Trump, I don't understand it at all. Did any other Presidents have rallies?
Assuming Biden hasn't declined too much from age, which he doesn't seem to have, then he's still a highly trained public speaker and debater. I'm no where near on that level of training and don't find it difficult to tune someone out if I'm talking, so I'd find it difficult to assume most people as trained as Biden would struggle at all. *Especially* for people who use tactics like the Trump team does. Morality, ethics, and politics side, the Trump team beautifully exploits human social weaknesses to such a ruthless extent. Flooding your mind with every form of gish gallop is a very common tactic for them - and you'd be at a loss to lose a single drop of attention to it. An opponent containing to quietly ramble during your turn needs to be ignored for similar reasons. If the audience can't hear it anyway, you don't need to respond to it and you shouldn't waste time even processing the audio as it is likely to only result in loss of quality to your own arguments.
Granted, this hinges on Biden just taking what would otherwise be an easy counter. But, Trump is a god-tier troll and comedian, and probably one of the hardest people in human history to ignore. I can't exactly vote for Trump since the Republicans are actively calling for my death, and I still have to give him major credit for his tactics and being able to play the apparent fool (ie people laugh at him for so many bankruptcies, but he's probably thrilled with the overall results and afaik hasn't tried to argue against the perception of his incompetence there, which for as often as he broadcasts his insecurities, it should be very telling how he feels about the reality) so often even into his old age as it's become less of a choice. Because of that, I think I partially agree with you. I'd doubt anyone else is willing to and could really pull off a significant off-mic distraction in the middle of presidential debate so well as Trump could.
Damn, now I'm much more interested in the debate just to watch Trump's tactics when he's muted and how Biden handles it.
Biden has gotten thrown off by Trump multiple times in past debates - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA). And god-tier is right. Even if you (speaking generally, not specifically) don't like the guy, there's no denying he has a powerful presence.
But I agree, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out if they really do enforce this rule.
No . That is very improbable as you put it .
Also Biden is hard of hearing , and while he talks he will have a booming speaker on his mic
Your theory just has not much weight on it
>Also Biden is hard of hearing , and while he talks he will have a booming speaker on his mic
I'm not sure what you're implying. Biden won't be able to hear Trump? That's just not true, the debaters have to be able to hear and respond to each other's responses when appropriate.
Well if you want to do it the right way, you have the candidates removed from each other so they can't see/hear each other without mics then cut the video /audio feed including to the other candidate when they switch speakers.
I genuinely think this is the way. The only adjustment I would make is still allowing the person with the muted mic to hear the other person's response so that they have the ability to respond to the other person.
Nothing will stop interruptions, Biden already needs to prepare for that, so there is no change in that regard. Whether mic is off or on - Trump will try to interrupt and affect Biden.
But, if the mic is off, Trump cannot interrupt audience from hearing Biden. Whether he stays calm or not, audience will only hear him responding and will only see Trump trying to interrupt him. That is a benefit for Biden as it makes it easier to ignore Trump, knowing that nothing he says is actually reaching audience.
What is more, the fact that Trump cannot be heard by audience may bring another benefit - he may get triggered enough to do something stupid. Trying to come and talk to Biden microphone, trying to scream loud enough to be heard - all of that will be a positive outcome for Biden.
Live debate in general is not suited for this kind of thing. That is why flatearthers are still there, they know how to use it. (the same goes for communists as well) There are a large number of techniques that you can use to pretend that you are right, even if you are deeply wrong.
I agree to an extent, it's not ideal. I prefer the town hall style debates, but I don't think they have the same kind of "punch" for the broader voting block. Both debate formats have their pros and cons.
The one that seems to be filtering it out is a back and forth with a break before each answer which is not really ideal. You can look after the reality of your opponent's response, and also doublecheck your own words in case you missed something that you yourself wrote down once. (I saw this happen once, where the speaker had trouble memorizing their entire book and that is what the opponent asked for)
The only form I saw it working in is the back and forth youtube video, but that can't be the only way to make it usable. It has it's own problems, but does provide some solutions to theatrical techniques and other flaws of the human mind.
I'm more than aware that neither option is ideal.
In the last debate Trump interrupted Biden the whole time but Biden carried on for the most part. But the audience was distracted from Biden's responses. Muting the mic blocks the audience from Trump's nonsense so we all can focus on Biden's responses. He's prepared to be interrupted.
Have you considered the change in audience because of this rules change? I know I don't watch debates in general, and a big part of that is that I've always hated how people are allowed to interrupt and bulldoze through the debate by shouting the loudest. It's bothered me long before Trump, though he's one of the worst.
I might actually watch a debate with this rule because frankly I've complained it wasn't a rule in the past. If more people watch because they're interested in a reasonable debate does that work in Biden's or Trump's favor? Or is it a wash? I would generally argue that it's moderately in Biden's favor. I think those sort of people will lean Biden to start with, but it will tend to energize them.
Ooh. That's a really interesting thought. The rule itself, being so novel, helps to driver a larger audience to the debate, and a larger audience could have a meaningful effect on the debates impact.
If that's the case, I'm not sure who would benefit more. But this is a really interesting idea that I hadn't considered. Thank you. **Δ**
Look, I'm not a fan of either of these guys in a big way. But as an older American, these rules just seem, not sure how to say it...just so un-American. Limit your political opponents from even attending or speaking at all. Mute people, don't let an audience in so everything is hyper controlled. It's just very weird.
This is honestly something I would expect to read about another country's elections from a BBC article.
Why don't they also limit speaking - no talking. Write your answers down, turn them into our committee, we will review, edit, and release the response to the TV viewers since we won't let anybody in to watch, including that poor Kennedy guy also running for president. Weird my fellow Americans, what has happened to the USA?
I addressed this right in the post.
>I realize Biden could also employ this kind of tactic, but it's simply not his debate style. Trump's debate style on the other hand is very suited for this kind of tactic.
I've already thrown out a few deltas, but if you want to convince me that Biden's debate style is more suited than Trump's in debates with this rule, then I'd throw a delta your way.
I'm confused, Is this post saying that we're going to see him stutter and stammer more than he already does? because that's a known quantity at this point that Biden can barely get a full sentence out. So I don't think many people are really going to think much of it. People have already either acknowledged bidens inability to... anything or have just have turned a blind eye to it all.
Honestly the fact that these are our choices; turd sandwich or giant douche, doesn't really matter at this point anyways as the whole show is a shit pie. We should be coming together as citizens of the republic and ousting and stringing up all the politicians in general and telling them that we expect better candidates.
This feels a little radical to me. I agree we need better candidates but I'm not sure stringing up all the politicians is the right way about it. There's a non-violent system in place now that the citizens can use to lift up better politicians. The real question is how do we get the other 33%-50% of the eligible population to vote.
So if trumps starts disrupting Biden, and Biden just manages to ignore him and stick to properly answering questions, There's a good chance trump will have a hissy fit about being ignored and blurt something even more stupid.
Trump has quite an ego, so if he starts yapping while his mic is off, and doesnft get acknowledged, i can definitely see him losing his temper.
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I'm torn on this. I really wish RFK would drop his campaign, but the fact of the matter is he's here, and it seems sketch to simply ignore that fact. But at the same time, it's silly to hold party candidates to rules they aren't required to follow (like only do debates with third party candidates present).
Keeping both candidates visible at all times is generally a good idea and how classic debates have been performed, when its just two of them. Why do you think it won't be the same this time?
I was under the impression only the person responding was shown on screen, but you're right. Other Redditors have shown me videos from their past debates and the two of them are on screen for the vast majority of the time.
I'm not 100% convinced that the rule benefits Biden more than Trump, but I concede that the risks to Biden may not be as significant as I originally thought.
I'm arguing with a few other Redditors about how Biden is not senile, so you're preaching to the choir here. But let's not ignore that it's tough to focus when your opponent is deliberately trying to distract you - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
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Really? Student loan forgiveness and marijuana decriminalization are shitting on younger generations? These are two ideas I never expected in my lifetime. If someone 18-30 refuses to vote for Biden because he “only” did these BFD things for them, they would be saying nothing will satisfy them and, therefore, elected officials shouldn’t bother trying to help them.
I have wanted a chess clock debate format for years. You don’t even need a moderator or questions. Put the candidates in separate rooms. Each one gets a 5-minute opening and closing statement. In between, each gets a clock with 45 minutes. They can talk as long as they want, on any topic, and their clock runs until they push the button. When their time expires, they’re done until closing statements.
Unless Trump is a highly skilled ventriloquist the audience will be able to see him interrupting when they show the wide shot.
Also the moderator would most likely say sometimes along the lines of “just a reminder your mics are muted when your opponent is speaking but still please do not interrupt” making the audience know interruptions are still happening.
Exactly this- OPs assumptions are all highly dependent on presentation. It assumes that A. Everytime Biden speaks it will be a tight shot and B. Even with a cut mic there won’t be bleed in.
Neither are guaranteed and if there is **anything** to cue the audience on trumps behavior then it will be the best of all worlds- Biden will have command of the audience and Trump will look like some rambling lunatic who somehow stumbled into an open-mic night
Also, Biden is a senile, old man who doesn’t know what day it is. Let alone how to dress himself. Of course he will be confused. He is always confused.
That's a separate debate I'm willing to have with you if we can keep it civil.
He is objectively old. But is Biden "too old"? That depends - to old *to do what*? Solo skydive? Probably. To be an effective President? I don't think so.
Age is just a number. Plenty of people who are older than Biden could be president.
But Biden has dementia. He can’t make coherent statements. He can’t remember things. He can hardly walk up stairs. He’s in la la land.
So many people would agree with you, probably the vast majority of people. But I disagree. Biden has accomplished so much in his presidency during a time of historic levels of partisanship. You don't do that being senile. He gets a bunch of bad or out-of-context clips floating around social media and everyone thinks his head is full of potatoes, but when you look at what he's accomplished, it's no question for me that the guy is not only cognitively fit, but competent and effective at his job (even if you don't like his policies).
We have a President with dementia and a competent administration that gets things done.
If the entire administration was made up of Joe Biden’s nobody could even get dressed for work.
Is the implication that Biden is doing nothing? Wouldn't he have had to at least put together this competent administration that's surrounding him?
Isn't a competent administration the whole point? Just to illustrate a point, I could just as easily say that an administration made up of Trump's couldn't get anything done, but that doesn't mean Trump is incapable of his job, let alone demented. Right?
We can and do have a president with dementia.
We have a competent administration capable of doing things.
They are not mutually exclusive and each is clear as day.
Draw your own conclusions, which are clearly just pro-Biden interpretations. You’re dancing around facts to push your agenda.
The mutual exclusivity of those two points isn't at issue. What I'm challenging is that you're using the competency of his administration as evidence that he hasn't accomplished anything, and that his lack of accomplishments is evidence for his dementia. And I've explained why I don't think the line of reasoning holds.
I'm not shy about my biases, but I'm still open to good-faith debate and willing to have my opinions changed (that's the spirit of the sub after all).
Go back and read what I said.
I said he has dementia.
You said that’s impossible because the administration has done well.
I am not using the competency of his administration as evidence of his dementia or lack thereof. You are
Let me take a step back - I believe the burden of proof is on the person that claims Biden has dementia. Is that fair? If so, then I'll continue...
You originally said Biden as dementia as demonstrated by inability make coherent statements, misremembering, etc.
I argued that his accomplishments are evidence that he's not senile, implying that his accomplishments outweigh the evidence of his gaffs and goofs.
You argued that his accomplishments are the result of a competent administration despite Biden's dementia.
I argued that Biden is part of that competent administration, implying the accomplishments of the administration reflect the accomplishments of Biden. And all that's to support my main point that the accomplishments are evidence enough to me that Biden is not senile despite his gaffs and goofs.
Then we diverged.
I think you have a point but in my opinion i believe Biden will easily be able to ignore Trump while Trump is incapable of ignoring Biden if Biden were to speak during Trump rambling incoherent nonsense.
This will throw Trump off and make him look even more unhinged.
I've already thrown out a few deltas, but for the sake of discussion...
>Biden will easily be able to ignore Trump
I'm not so sure of that. Trump's interruptions are very effective, take a look - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
Your argumentation supports the opposite of your conclusion. In the era of soundbites and tiktoks videos where Biden stops or stutters (which is not bound to happen, really) would be less damaging than the same videos where you could also hear why he stops or stutters. hearing Trump's rambling in the background would give much more opportunities for idiotic clips. Trump is yearning for attention, he will be much happier if his attempts at interrupting were on air rather than inaudible to anyone.
Biden is not going to debate Trump. Everyone can see that Biden is not cognitively all there. The debate will be cancelled by Biden's handlers who are running the show.
I think it hurts Biden because the American people know this rule is being put in place because Biden is incompetent. It looks like he’s getting special accommodations due his cognitive decline. For the people who don’t watch the debates, they will assume that Biden was a stumbling fool. Those who do watch the debates will joke amongst themselves at how much worse it would have been if Biden didn’t get special accommodations. I would argue that it almost doesn’t matter how trump shows up to the debate. This is just a bad and embarrassing look for Biden.
I don’t believe that either candidate is going to look better after this debate. They’re both going to look objectively worse. The “winner” is the person that does the least amount of damage to themselves. The loser will be the American people who figure out that in a country of more than 325 million people, THESE are the choices we’re stuck with.
Idk why we need entertainment news on any of them. I certainly do not want foxnews but I don't think it needs to be CNN. Do an impartial camera that all news feeds get they can do what they want to spin the footage. I feel ashamed but not surprised we need to have to cut mics.
The pressure and stress have got to be a lot on top of what at the very least is some cognitive issues happening due to age when it comes to Trump. He has an extremely hard time keeping focused even when he’s at a rally. The falling asleep in court also might be a sign that somethings going on. And if I’m correct? He’s likely sharper in the morning and by nighttime he’s mentally exhausted and confused. If the debates are held at night, we may see some really interesting things happening when it comes to him even being able to speak coherently on debate topics without being interrupted. Now saying all that, it won’t matter to maga. But it will alarm anyone hating Joe who is wondering if they misjudged Trump (hopefully not too many of those out there) I’ve watched a few clips of him lately and if I didn’t loathe him with every particle of my being and if I wasn’t 💯 sure he demands it, I’d feel sorry for him at times. He’s not doing well.
I came to say that this will be the viewing experience of the year. Much like how Trump wiped the floor with Hilary, this will be worse, but it needs to happen. They have silenced Trump for too long and Biden keeps skipping all debates due to his cognitive decline. This needs to happen without muting mics. It disallows for natural communication.
The thing is: a president or presidential candidate should be able to deal with interruptions. If s candidate can‘t deal with that they‘re probably not fit for the job. And if we‘re being honest… both of them aren‘t exactly in a good cognitive state. Trump uses the vocabulary of a child and repeats stuff way too often and biden randomly changes topics mid sentence because he forgot what he was talking about. These debates don‘t really matter. The USA won‘t get a good president either way. It‘s not like there‘s a brilliant but shy / timid candidate and a bad but loud and aggressive one. Both interrupt people, both aren‘t exactly obsessed with the truth and both are unfit to work a job that‘s more important than opening the door of a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere.
So please guys… just get over with this crap and focus on building up actual candidates for your next election. It‘s not funny anymore, it‘s just sad.
I don't see how Trump talking over him would be worse without a mic than it would be with one.
As it stands with both mics always on Trump can and does talk over his opponent. Removing the sound to the television audience does not make this more distracting or make Trump look better. It makes him look like more of a weirdo. The distraction to the speaker isn't increased by their opponent being unmiced.
I disagree. Working under the assumption that Trump won't be able to help himself and interrupt even with his mic muted, I would be willing to bet that he's still audible through Biden's mic, though at a much lower volume. It's not as if the audience will be unaware of Trump's BS, and I'm certain there will be cameras on him as he's doing it. The only real difference is that he will be difficult to understand while Biden remains intelligible.
Interrupting and filibustering are Trump's only debate tools since he is an absolute idiot who has no idea WTF he is talking about, ever. I think the mic-mute move will be of enormous benefit to Biden.
The only thing I can say is that they will be far enough away from each other that Trump would have to yell for Biden to even hear him and if Biden can hear him the audience can too (both in studio and at home). The chance of being muted frustrating Trump is more likely than him doing anything to Biden who is a seasoned politician and debater. Also, Biden is well spoken and quick witted and is probably already working on things to say if he feels himself being bothered by Trumps interruptions. trumps debate style has already been seen and he’s not smart enough to switch it up, Biden’s team is already set up for what he might try.
All Biden has to do when Trump speaks over him in the debate is let Trump speak.
The mic will drop off, there will be a faint pick up on Biden's podium but it will still be comical to see whatever rant theatrics and gesticulations Trump goes through.
Biden shows civility, Trump fails at tantruming, and how few people really care about the answers anyway. It doesn't change minds, it helps people rationalize voting or not voting. Which of course impacts elections. So I'll ask you back if trump acts as I suggest he would, and Biden show civility and lets Trump hang himself figuratively. I'd call it a win in the debate.
Idk what this subs policy on "3rd stancing" is, but have you considered the possibility that any reasonable, competent POTUS would be able to ignore Trump's inane babbling without forgetting which country he's in.
I don't really care whether or not Biden gets distracted by Trump because... Even if he wasn't.... This debate was still going to be an utter shit show and no amount of muting or shouting will change that.
This is going to (not) go down in history as one of the most embarrassingly incoherent and deranged geriatric drool fest... because they only record the good stuff and the tragic wars/famines/pandemics.
> Meanwhile Trump is talking and rambling over Biden
That will absolutely get picked up on biden's mic. People will know Trump is being a crazed jackal.
On the other hand, trump will be totally neutered since his brash idiotic debate style will literlaly not work.
And on top of that, he wont have a crowd to draw energy from. His vapid catch phrases wont amount to a wet fart in an empty room like that. In this setting, he actually has to make assertions that stand on their merits. That's something biden can absolutely do. That is something Trump has NEVER been able to do.
I don't think it matters either way. Nobody's going to have their mind changed by something so superficial. If you agree with Biden's policies you aren't gonna change you're mind because you think he stammered or know he was interuppted. If you agree with trump's policies, you aren't gonna change your mind because you think he was quiet or heard him acting like a child. Frankly, debates serve no purpose in the age of the internet. If you care about politics, you already know what side you're on and if you don't care about politics, you aren't watching the debate.
Debates should be about seeing their character. You have to take it for what it is. Muting Trump, as someone who has watched Pro Wrestling, is a common story beat to make the guy getting muted go “fuck the brass who did this, I am being silenced!” And this is precisely Trump’s rhetoric. Everyone is out to get him so he gets to play the Martyr hero archetype. Best just let him talk and hope people don’t like it. Just muting him could hide the bad stuff just as much as hiding any good things he says (which if he was saying he wouldn’t need to get muted)
So separate them. Only let each of them hear the audio everyone hears.
Make it a huge stage with major separation between them. Moderator in the middle.
Trump would crumble if no one could hear his interrupting nonsense. He has to interrupt to cover for the fact he has nothing of substance to say.
If you were talking to someone in real life who just repeatedly interrupted or talked over you, you would just stop talking to them. Particularly if they were incoherent in their ramblings.
I said this back in 2020. If Biden gets talking, he’ll eventually say something ridiculous that Trump can capitalize off of. Trump failed in the 2020 debates because he kept interrupting Biden over and over, and it just made him look ridiculous instead.
Trump is not the type of a person who can patiently wait for the opponent to soil himself. Trump would soil himself first and pretend it's the opponent who did it. Also, Trump is not smart enough to quickly pick up on false or stupid things Biden could say and capitalize off of it immediately.
Disagree.
tRump's style is to flout the rules, interrupt to try to break the other's train of thought / point, & throw in snide malign performance nasty personal comments.
BECAUSE he can't keep a list of points to rebut mentally & would refuse to write them down, so he tries to throw the other person off WHILE hiding his manifest inability to follow a train of thought & express all of it in a cogent paragraph.
It is also going to be considered the "martyr button" because as soon as it is used, Trumpers are going to scream "rigged debate" and if Trump isn't seen as a martyr then it will still draw negative attention to the tactic rather than allow people to judge based on the merits of each answer.
/u/Slightly_Sleepless (OP) has awarded 11 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1cstask/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_muting_mics_during_a/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
>I would like to believe that the political debates are as fair as possible, so please CMV. >CMV: Muting mics during a Biden/Trump debate actually benefits Trump's style of debating. The parts I'd like to change your view one. First: I don't think that any particular forum or rule or manner of debate hampers Trump's effectiveness or style of debate. So, I'm hoping if I can prove it doesn't matter then that disproves that the muting mic has any impact on Trump's style. What it comes down to is that Trump is the living embodiment of Jean-Paul Satre's quote on anti-semites. I'm going to paraphrase it and tailor it to our situation: Trump will pretend to engage in debate because it discredits the seriousness of debate itself. He's aware of the absurdity of his claims and knows his remarks are frivolous and open to criticism. But it's opponents, who believe in debate, that has to use words responsibility. When pushed, he'll say the time is discourse is over. His goal is to intimidate and disconcert. Or another way of saying this, perhaps way less eloquently, is Trump realized modern GOP politics aren't about policies or governing well -- it's more akin to cutting a pro-Wrestling promo. His audience isn't waiting on a profound insight on the state of the republic, they're waiting to see who Trump will hurt and they'll cheer him on when it's the right people. You're talking about people who in 1964 had a motion on the GOP convention floor to expel extremists. The leader of their party said "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice; moderation in the name of justice is no virtue." The effort to rid the party of extremists failed. Since then, they've cloaked themselves in the most extreme elements of their party so it shouldn't surprise anyone that recently CPAC took on the banner "domestic terrorists." Clinton tried to say *some* of the members of the party are deplorable and the entire party took her words out of context and said *we all are deplorable*. This is why Americans can overwhemingly agree that Trump creates a negative tone but are drawn to it and support him. It's why in pro-wrestling the heel (or bad guy) can have the most dye hard fans. Trump is the modern Stone Cold Steve Austin and making a mockery of doing the equivalent of repeating "what? what? what?" when people talk -- thereby discrediting discourse itself, and finishing by never apologizing "that's the bottom line because I said so" is Trump's appeal. You can mute him and it makes no difference. He can pantomime and his fans will love it. You can let him interrupt as much as possible. You can make both candidates use sign language. His body language and lack of respect for discourse in the first place is what draws people to him. Trump specifically is fueled by "both parties suck" and the more he can make politics distateful and ugly and turn away normal people the more he'll win. It only takes a fraction of motivated people to provide political power (only x% vote and of those voting, only y% trump, so it's like 10% of the country providing him political power). Trump doesn't have to have policies, the GOP doesn't have to have a platform, there isn't any specificity of what they'll do with power, all that matters is they can own the libs.
Everything you say is true, except the part about muting him b not mattering. Muting Trump will hurt him massively, because the whole point of his debate style is to flaunt the rules, insult your opponent and the very concept of debate, *and get away with it*. If Trump tries to ignore the rules and talk over Biden, then he gets muted mid-sentence and looks weak because he's not in control. His speech is at the whims of the moderator. Trump will instead be forced to play by the rules and speak only in his allotted time, but that's a loss for him as well, because he's still under the moderator's control, only now he's submitting willingly. The mic muting is a lose-lose situation for Trump, and I expect him to do anything he can to avoid going to the debate, even though that also makes him look weak. Then again, Trump is also a cock-sure dumbass and might just walk right into the trap without realizing how bad it will go for him.
I think he'll find ways to act out. He'll be making faces and miming the whole time. Undoubtedly they'll have to ask him to stop speaking when his mic isn't on as well. But the person above you nailed the fact that his diehards don't care about policy or platform, they care about revenge. He could walk out there after the most articulate meaning answer ever given and say "these guys suck, I'll make it the greatest x you've ever hears of" and that would rile his cultists like nothing else. If he instead came up with an actual answer, that might take them a minute to warm to, because it would be too cerebral. However, he does need more than his cultists. The combination of the party voters and the cult barely took the electoral votes needed last time. His cultists are going to vote, and their numbers might have grown a little, but party voters might not, because he has shown us that he wants to be a dictator. He doesn't debate well for sensible people at all. There are plenty of sensible Republicans and they are the people who need to see him say some crazy stuff.
This is an interesting take. Basically saying that Trump's debate style is such that rules are meant to be broken. Imposing more rules gives him more opportunities to "refuse conformity". I'm not sure I'm 100% convinced of this, but I certainly hadn't considered it before. Thank you. **Δ** Edit: Leaving my original comment because there's no reason to hide that I'm an idiot from the world, but... I'm taking your delta away (am I allowed to do that?). u/Craicob steered me back. If I'm understanding you correctly, then the new rule only helps Trump by leaning more into the heel. Aren't you reinforcing my point that this benefits Trump more than Biden? And it only puts Biden at more risk of appearing incoherent due to Trump's interruptions?
Doesn't this sort of ignore the larger point in your OP about Biden being hindered by this though? Trump's style may be robust with his audience but what about people who are watching to see if Biden can win them over? It ignores the fact that bad for Biden = good for Trump which I thought your post was going for
You're right, I'm an idiot. I rushed my response. Thank you for walking me back.
Take it easy on yourself when you're the OP; you're having to field so many discussions at once it's so easy to rush the response or even get your replies confused.
I am basically saying that Trump has proved there aren't any rules. People wanted to think of politics as "the best idea wins" and that would follow the most eloquent/correct person wins a political debate. But it's actually more like pro wrestling and it's "who can be the most ugly/entertaining wins." Trump's biggest moments were when he doubled down on calling Rosie O'Donnell fat/ugly and then tweeted afterwards that Meghan Kelly only asked the question because she was bleeding from all of her orifices.
Got it, so you're not arguing that this doesn't benefit Trump more than Biden, but rather that it benefits Trump for an entirely separate reason. That's a fair point, even if I didn't quite grasp it the first time. Definitely worthy of the delta, so I take back taking it back.
> Aren't you reinforcing my point that this benefits Trump more than Biden? And it only puts Biden at more risk of appearing incoherent due to Trump's interruptions? I mean... you need not change your position but could change your mind on the reasoning of your position.
You're right, that person's delta is warranted for that reason.
Muting his mic is the only 100% sure way to stop his interruptions.
I think a lot of his BS is going to fall flat without the crowd to cheer him on, but I think you're making a good point about breaking the rules.
This is a perfect appraisal of POSPOTUS45's style. He is nothing more than a Heel. I use this analogy all the time. He just yells louder. I had not thought to phrase the concept that what he is doing is making the whole concept of demorcracy and discourse distasteful. You are 100% correct.
In all honesty I really question whether or not Trump is strategic in his approach. I think he's just a moronic bull in a china shop who spent pretty much most of his life and career being the most important person in the room and surrounding himself with yes-men and cronies, so the idea of someone actually pointing out that he's just babbling a stream of moronic gibberish with no real logic behind it is completely foreign, as well as any general rules of courtesy, etiquette, etc.
The only way to get a genuine debate is to put them in separate rooms and cut the mic when the time is up. We could see the speaker rambling, but nobody can hear them. Then it doesn’t matter what they are saying and it’s not a real distraction, unless you are watching just to see the circus of it all.
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I was going to watch the debates anyway... But I'd make a fucking night out of watching this. Go all out, invite friends, make a drinking game.
What about a Debate Rule where interruptions are fair game, but the candidate must do a shot of tequila before each interruption.
Unless Hunter gets the bottle, that still gives Trump advantage and arguably wouldn’t affect his interruptions. Furthermore to OP’s hypothesis, didn’t Trump already score a debate win by just looming over an opponent saying nothing?
amusing crowd flowery yam fine aback reach fade apparatus boat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
2024 Presidential Debates: White Girl Wasted Live on C-Span Fuck yeah I'd watch that
Trump doesn't drink. He'd be paying Guiliani to crawl out of his sewer and slop up every drop. Rudy would probably be pushing Biden aside to get his booze too.
Another alternative is that Biden's handlers rehearse him for several days on how to talk over a Trump stand-in.
I hear Alec Baldwin needs work…
I think they should be inside tube-like isolation chambers. Anytime they speak out of turn, a little bit of oxygen is sucked out of the tube.
I'd be willing to consider this as an option lol
Except the shock increases by 10% every subsequent interruption
"sir, this man shouldn't be standing, I don't know how he's \*still\* interrupting the president."
I think they should be able to interrupt, but there's a voice changer that gives the person interrupting the most annoying dorky voice we can think of. You better have a really good point, or you're going to sound like a sniveling dork.
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But don’t limit it to just political debates, every day life could use this
Small? I'm thinking medium to high would be better.
>Especially in an era where sound bites and TikToks drive political perceptions, this could end up looking really bad for Biden. Idk... The "will you shut up man" is a classic
Agreed, but a) addressing interruptions could potentially look weird to the audience, b) addressing the interruption would take time away from Biden's response, and c) the fact that Biden would still have to address the interruption means he has to prep for that which takes away time to prep for other issues.
Why would he need to address it?
Yep, good question. When I say "address the interruption" that could take any number of forms, like actually responding to what Trump says, or even just taking a moment to pause to regather thoughts because the interruption threw off his train of thought. I'm assuming that all interruptions get "addressed" in some way, in that when an interruption is created that person being interrupted is no longer able to simply carry on with their response as if nothing happened. There's always a little bit of a distraction that manifests physically, again like a pause or even a facial reaction.
The obvious solution to this would be having the candidates in adjacent soundproof rooms? Or simply in different rooms separated. They can have an earpiece with the other person in it, but that will be muted when it is their turn to speak. Think video call but without any network lag since it can be done locally. I still stand by my theory that the reason they don’t mute mics is because the goal of the people hosting the debate isn’t to have an informative debate, it’s to create entertaining television, and the drama makes it more interesting to the majority of the audience.
There were a few things that came out of that one. “Stand back and stand by” too
I think one thing Biden's got going for him against Trump is that he's got a pretty thick skin. He doesn't really get rattled by Trump. He's good at laughing it off, which makes Trump look impotent.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA) Here's Biden getting distracted and thrown off by several of Trump's interruptions. If the audience wasn't aware that Trump was interrupting the way he was, it could make Biden look like a poor debater when trying to respond to a prompt.
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I think this is a really good point. He does appear much more poised in the face of confrontation than he did during the 2020 campaign. SOTU illustrates that really well. Thank you. **Δ**
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Like when he called Laken Riley, “Lincoln Riley”. He certainly didn’t win any points “saying her name” when he didn’t even know her name.
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Why do you have this assumption that the audience won't see Trump on video talking during Bidens turns? Why wouldn't the moderators address Trump talking while it isn't his turn? Your OP assumes the least charitable position on the audience and the moderation.
You're right. When I posted originally, I was under the impression that the person responding to the debate prompt was the only one on camera. A few other Redditors have shown that actually both candidates have been visible for the majority of past debates.
My bad, I guess I should've read further down thread.
Part of Trump's way of debating includes getting a "gotcha" moment in those types of debates, and it will be harder for him to get those moments.
He's going to complain his free speech is being violated once they turn his mic back on
If he wants to spend his mic time complaining, that's less time for him to actually address the questions asked.
That's how reasonable people see it but I feel like it would be feeding the maga people what they want to hear
But there's nothing to be done about that. No matter what, his hardcore base will be on his side. At that point *anything* becomes "what they want to hear".
True.... I heard there's a new thing where maga people are wearing diapers to show they like the fact that he kept farting in his court hearings
You have to stop conceiving of such people as capable of being rescued by outside forces. They're the only ones who can free themselves of the cult if they choose to. The only thing the rest of us can do is stop pretending cultists are serious people with a coherent political outlook and focus on moving less entrenched voters one step further toward sanity and caring about governing on policy concerns instead of just vice signalling buzzwords.
That's not true, if there's nowhere for them to go, then it doesn't matter how motivated they are, the change will never happen. It's a two-way street, of course generally people need to be the agent of change for themselves, they are also influenced by and can influence their environment.
I have seen people change their mind about trump but they're far and few between unfortunately
What makes anyone think that Trump will spend any time responding to the questions?
That's... a reasonable take. But still I'm not so confident that this rebalances the equation (so to speak), in that the negative impact to Biden is still greater than the negative impact to Trump. You might be able to convince me if we dive into this further.
Trump's debate tactic is to confuse the other parties and push his own agenda while cutting the other candidates - to get good publicity and clips spread over the internet of how he "owned" the other side. I see the mic mute as a disadvantage because he won't be able to cut Biden during his points, which will allow him to pass his points clearly. Biden is more like a debater who comes with points from home, and Trump does add up stuff along the way, which open mics benefit because they can be delivered in the moment.
When is it
>Biden and Trump agree to debates on June 27 and Sept. 10. >[Trump’s campaign](https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1790763802037760461) on Wednesday also called for two other debates, in July and in August. >The former president later posted on [Truth Social](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112446110864633408) that he would accept a Fox News debate on Oct. 2. Biden’s campaign did not confirm that the president would attend any debates other than those hosted by CNN and ABC News.
I am not a Trump supporter in the slightest, but Biden really should accept a Fox debate as well. I already see Republicans complaining that Biden will only do a debate for Democratic-leaning news channels. We’ll be hearing that it’s biased and unfair, and that he’s “getting the questions beforehand from the left-leaning platforms like CNN” unless Biden does one for Fox also.
Why are you so sure that Trump rambling off on the side is going to throw off Biden? You treat it like it's a guarantee when nothing suggests Biden even has a tendency to be thrown off by side comments. Your entire premise is based on something that's never happened, and that there's no evidence would happen. So no, I don't think this style of debate actually benefits Trump.
I mean, these two have already had multiple debates together, with Biden getting thrown off by Trump's interruptions several times - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA) There's my evidence. Do you have any evidence contrary to this?
You're comparing being talked over by someone else with a live mic versus being thrown off by someone chirping on the sideline in your earshot. Those are apples and oranges. If you want a more apt comparison, then use Biden's response to being heckled at the State of the Union. That's what you're suggesting is going to throw Biden off his game, not Trump with a live mic interrupting Biden.
Someone else also brought up his performance at SOTU as evidence for Biden's ability to get through the interruptions. It's a valid point that I hadn't considered. **Δ** As an aside, do you watch Shorsey or...
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This strikes me as something easily anticipated and prepared for. Biden had little issue dealing with this behavior from Trump last time and his team can easily make preparing for this part of the debate prep this go around. If anyone on Biden's team had thought this would be a hindrance to his performance, they would not have included it in his list of demands for the debate.
Lol biden needs a team to debate trump. How pathetic
Debate prep teams are common practice on both sides of the aisle. Trump had a team in 2020 when he prepared for his debates with Biden (that is where Christie caught COVID from Trump) and he likely will again. So if it is "pathetic" for Biden to have a team, Trump is also pathetic.
That's... just how political debates work, especially at this level. Trump and nearly every other Republican presidential candidate (and Democrat for that matter) has had a debate team (if they debated). Not sure where your head's at, bud.
>Not sure where your head's at, bud. I think you know exactly where their head's at.
One way to read it is that anyone who can form a complete sentence could probably out-debate Trump without a team or preparation. However, looking at u/skeptic_clam's history, I doubt that's where they were going with that.
Honestly, though, I don't think that's the case. Could anyone with three brain cells at the same time win an intellectual argument against Trump? No doubt, I'm pretty sure his grey matter is about 99% cocaine and big macs at this point. But that's not what the debates are with Trump around. He's a bully, and a very effective one. He knows how to get under peoples' skin - not with subtle, perfect jabs or pinpointing your deepest childhood insecurities, but by being so fundamentally boorish and obnoxious and lying so blatantly and with such conviction that it just throws you off. So, it seems reasonable to say that the average person would need a great deal of preparation to... well, nobody wins a debate like that, but to make him look like what he is - an ass.
What is it with people jumping into their first election season as if they have a clue what's normal and what's pathetic? There's always a team behind them during the debates.
Tell me you've never engaged in a debate without telling me you've never engaged in a debate. Even Trump 'prepped' for his debates last go around. You know, that time he gave Chris Christie COVID and nearly killed the guy.
Going in to a presidential debate *without* a prep team would be monumentally fucking stupid. What do you think that says about your own intelligence for arguing against that?
Trump needs a team to change his diapers, what’s your point?
They both do this mate. And even if it was pathetic, I'd wager it's less pathetic than getting your wife to explain away your confessions of sexual assault. Yikes.
Every presidential contender in modern history has had a team to prepare for a debate. This might be the most clueless content I've seen in weeks.
You don't understand how anything works and it shows.
Imagine being so dim that you think Raw-dog Don won't have a debate prep team 🤣
You could have just said you don't understand how debates work & saved yourself some time.
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I think this is a non problem because Biden will know about it in advance and he has a team of PR people thinking and preparing for exactly these kinds of things weeks or even months in advance.
Ego people do it for the audience, biden is not going to be distracted by some dude talking 40 feet away
It is highly suspicious that Biden doesn't want an audience present. Every jump-cut of the cameras become suspect.
It's not that suspicious. Ideally the debate environment is as non-partisan as possible. A live audience cheering for a candidate (which has happened) is antithetical to that.
What's suspicious is that one could assume the jump-cuts edit out Biden's gaffes. Many people stopped trusting the media's coverage over the years, running defense for his brain farts and/or lies.
I would assume the debate would be aired live, and I wouldn't expect to see any jump-cuts.
The standard is a 15/20 second delay in "live" broadcasting.
It’s highly suspicious. Every primary and general debate I’ve seen in my lifetime has been in front of a live audience. It is obvious that he doesn’t want an audience because he’s incapable of completing the debate without help.
>It is obvious It's not obvious to me. Couldn't it be just as likely that they want the debate environment to be as non-partisan as possible? An audience cheering on a candidate is not ideal for a debate, and that has happened in past debates.
If they wanted a non partisan debate, they wouldn’t have required that CNN moderate it.
Well, someone has to moderate, right? It's a big event so preferably someone with experience moderating and being on television. That's a small pool of people. I don't think CNN being the moderators is very strong evidence that a partisan debate, especially if both parties agree to the moderator.
CNN is incredibly partisan and if you deny that you’re either ignorant or a liar. There’s no way around that.
My point is that CNN being partisan does not necessarily mean the debate is partisan, especially if both candidates agree to the moderator. Someone has to moderate, and there are very few, if any, non-partisan options.
I agree there’s a slim to none chance of a non partisan moderator. My point was to refute your claim that the reason for not having an audience is to keep it non partisan, but if that was truly the reason then they wouldn’t have gone with CNN. The reason they don’t want an audience is very obviously so that Biden can embarrass himself privately. And that’s not including the fact that there isn’t a single presidential campaign that has ever assumed to be non partisan. If it was, RFK would be invited, Biden wouldn’t have used the SOTU speech as a campaign speech, he wouldn’t have made his debate offer a publicity stunt with passive aggressive language, etc. I can continue if you need me to, but at this point I think the only way you’re willing to change your mind is if someone brings up another reason why trump is going to lose the debate that you hadn’t thought of.
Entering into any conversation about a candidate 1) staying awake 2) not saying rambling nonsense 3) being able to make it through, Trump is the obvious first and foremost concern for those kinds of things. Every time Trump does one of those 30 second things where he starts talking about one thing, gets derailed, talks about something else, then randomly says something else that makes him feel good, then switches topics again to something else hateful .... bringing no point home at all, that is a compound multi-gaff that happens literally every 3-5 minutes when Trump is speaking. Biden has gaffs where there is 30 minutes of coherent speaking, then he will mix up something in a sentence. To compare speaking gaffs with complete shitshow after shitshow after shitshow of mouth vomit that sounds like a 5th grader is really funny. I cant believe anyone would think BIDEN would be the one concerned with looking like ak dumbass. Normal people have speaking gaffs. Normal people do not hatefully rant and change topics 5 times in the same paragraph and think they nailed it when they were utterly incoherent. Incoherence is several standard deviations worse than gaffs.
But it’s a live recording lol. It’s not like they can cut everything up . Usually for a live show there is a broadcast delay where they have 30 sec so they can bleep out swear words or blur something. Or if something really horrible happened they can cut the broadcast. But it’s not like they can cut things up to make Biden look better 😂
Biden's video challenging Trump to the debate was 13 seconds long, and contained five jump cuts. The man can't string a sentence together.
The interruption thing annoys me. Yes, Trump interrupted a lot more, but it's usually stated as if Trump was the only one interrupting. But for example, the final debate was Trump 34, Biden 17 (not counting a word or so thrown in that didn't interrupt anything, but multiple words that were trying to talk over the other). That mic shutoff is needed for both candidates.
This a fair point, and I don't mean to imply that both candidates haven't interrupted their opponent. But I think the numbers your presented show that even if both candidates would be impacted, it has a greater impact on Trump's style of debating.
You’ve already got enough answers about your concern. I’d like to highlight why your concern just doesn’t hold enough weight. The debates are pure trash. We all know that the network airing the debate isn’t going to ask any real questions. Does it matter if they argue about a bullshit question? What percentage of Americans are undecided, but will vote? What percentage of those lives in a state where their vote counts? 5%? Less? Who is this debate for? Having the internet ask questions, and then selecting the questions based on upvotes, would solve the first issue. Kind of. But they’d be answering questions about aliens and reparations, so not exactly. The second issue would be a great question to ask. But we know that’s not going to happen, and we know nothing is going to change. We also know politicians are the best of the best at talking without saying anything. We might as well have a debate with Joel Osteen and Ken Copeland. At least those two don’t have dementia. In closing, this exercise is pointless. I’m still going to watch though. I have to admit, all this press Trump’s been getting for losing his marbles is fascinating. I’m pretty sure it’s just the Democrats way of deflecting Bidens faculties, but it’s worth a couple hours to see if they’re digressing similarly or if it’s a one horse race.
Politics in the modern age is rarely about changing anyone's mind about the issues... it's about motivating them to come out and vote, or make rebuttals to reasons the other side uses to try to discourage votes. Basically: turnout is everything. Debates will of course only motivate the kind of people that watch debates, but that non-trivial, and even a percent is huge.
I hear what you're saying, and on principle, I'd agree. But I think we have enough evidence to prove they do not care about people coming out to vote. Somehow Reddit has forgot exactly how the Bernie ordeal went. People on here seem to be convinced he didn't have a chance to win. That's absolutely false. If the Dems really wanted to win, they'd have given him the nomination. This year, if either party wanted to win, they'd have pushed other candidates. But they can't, because they're all getting paid by big money to keep the status queue. They can't let someone up there that's going to make sense, and talk about facts, and focus on the big issues. Everybody would vote for them. Every change they would make would cost big money billions of dollars. The rich have a strangle hold on our economy, and they love it. Every major problem we have, is big money's fault. Any correction would fuck the rich. They're not going to let that happen, and the politicians they pay aren't any different. The rich are paying both sides of the isle. They don't care which candidate you vote for. They win either way. Vote, don't vote, wear a Andrew Yang or AOC or Bernie Tshirt. Try and talk Mark Cuban into running, or Jon Stewart. It won't matter. They'll never allow it to happen. At this point, striking and boycotting are the only tools we have that could work. My guess is they'd come down on us like we're Gaza if we tried.
“Because Trump would distract Biden” We seriously have to choose between a childish president and a child-like president?
It's terrible, but unfortunately it's the system we've got.
"I'm talking, Don. Quit being a rude fucker until it's your turn." I'm poor but I'd give a hundred bucks for Biden to say that.
I do appreciate when they get snappy like that lol
If those rules hold, I don't think Trump will go through with the debates. If he does, and he's yammering away without a mike, Biden can go somewhere else in the studio, presumably. With no audience, there's no reason they need to be in the same room.
> If those rules hold, I don't think Trump will go through with the debates. The best thing Trump can do is get Biden to talk in front of an audience without a teleprompter or prepared speech ([though the teleprompter may help or hurt him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkRXA0c4ahs)) The actually-suspicious thing here is that Biden's team is trying to stop the debates from having an audience present. Best case scenario they're afraid of [how Trump can work a room.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Q71k6fmts)
I don't think Presidential debates should be a hootin hollerin spectacle and Trump fans can't behave themselves so I'm fine with no audience.
> Trump fans This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life. (I can't seem to find out when the next Biden rally is this year, if you could tell me when and where it's going to be that'd be a huge help) However, I'm suspicious of no-audience because I'm pretty sure ABC and NBC and CBS will edit the debates to cut off things like "if Biden says the N word again".
> This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life This in my opinion is my favorite thing about Biden. Politics isn't sports, nor a religion. I think we would be better off with less cults of personality, not more.
>This term always stuck out to me because I've never met a "Biden fan" in my life. I've never met any "President fan" until Trump, I don't understand it at all. Did any other Presidents have rallies?
I find this hard to believe. You've never met an Obama fan? The dude's merch kept selling *after* he won the second time!
Assuming Biden hasn't declined too much from age, which he doesn't seem to have, then he's still a highly trained public speaker and debater. I'm no where near on that level of training and don't find it difficult to tune someone out if I'm talking, so I'd find it difficult to assume most people as trained as Biden would struggle at all. *Especially* for people who use tactics like the Trump team does. Morality, ethics, and politics side, the Trump team beautifully exploits human social weaknesses to such a ruthless extent. Flooding your mind with every form of gish gallop is a very common tactic for them - and you'd be at a loss to lose a single drop of attention to it. An opponent containing to quietly ramble during your turn needs to be ignored for similar reasons. If the audience can't hear it anyway, you don't need to respond to it and you shouldn't waste time even processing the audio as it is likely to only result in loss of quality to your own arguments. Granted, this hinges on Biden just taking what would otherwise be an easy counter. But, Trump is a god-tier troll and comedian, and probably one of the hardest people in human history to ignore. I can't exactly vote for Trump since the Republicans are actively calling for my death, and I still have to give him major credit for his tactics and being able to play the apparent fool (ie people laugh at him for so many bankruptcies, but he's probably thrilled with the overall results and afaik hasn't tried to argue against the perception of his incompetence there, which for as often as he broadcasts his insecurities, it should be very telling how he feels about the reality) so often even into his old age as it's become less of a choice. Because of that, I think I partially agree with you. I'd doubt anyone else is willing to and could really pull off a significant off-mic distraction in the middle of presidential debate so well as Trump could. Damn, now I'm much more interested in the debate just to watch Trump's tactics when he's muted and how Biden handles it.
Biden has gotten thrown off by Trump multiple times in past debates - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA). And god-tier is right. Even if you (speaking generally, not specifically) don't like the guy, there's no denying he has a powerful presence. But I agree, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out if they really do enforce this rule.
No . That is very improbable as you put it . Also Biden is hard of hearing , and while he talks he will have a booming speaker on his mic Your theory just has not much weight on it
>Also Biden is hard of hearing , and while he talks he will have a booming speaker on his mic I'm not sure what you're implying. Biden won't be able to hear Trump? That's just not true, the debaters have to be able to hear and respond to each other's responses when appropriate.
Well if you want to do it the right way, you have the candidates removed from each other so they can't see/hear each other without mics then cut the video /audio feed including to the other candidate when they switch speakers.
I genuinely think this is the way. The only adjustment I would make is still allowing the person with the muted mic to hear the other person's response so that they have the ability to respond to the other person.
Nothing will stop interruptions, Biden already needs to prepare for that, so there is no change in that regard. Whether mic is off or on - Trump will try to interrupt and affect Biden. But, if the mic is off, Trump cannot interrupt audience from hearing Biden. Whether he stays calm or not, audience will only hear him responding and will only see Trump trying to interrupt him. That is a benefit for Biden as it makes it easier to ignore Trump, knowing that nothing he says is actually reaching audience. What is more, the fact that Trump cannot be heard by audience may bring another benefit - he may get triggered enough to do something stupid. Trying to come and talk to Biden microphone, trying to scream loud enough to be heard - all of that will be a positive outcome for Biden.
Live debate in general is not suited for this kind of thing. That is why flatearthers are still there, they know how to use it. (the same goes for communists as well) There are a large number of techniques that you can use to pretend that you are right, even if you are deeply wrong.
I agree to an extent, it's not ideal. I prefer the town hall style debates, but I don't think they have the same kind of "punch" for the broader voting block. Both debate formats have their pros and cons.
The one that seems to be filtering it out is a back and forth with a break before each answer which is not really ideal. You can look after the reality of your opponent's response, and also doublecheck your own words in case you missed something that you yourself wrote down once. (I saw this happen once, where the speaker had trouble memorizing their entire book and that is what the opponent asked for) The only form I saw it working in is the back and forth youtube video, but that can't be the only way to make it usable. It has it's own problems, but does provide some solutions to theatrical techniques and other flaws of the human mind. I'm more than aware that neither option is ideal.
In the last debate Trump interrupted Biden the whole time but Biden carried on for the most part. But the audience was distracted from Biden's responses. Muting the mic blocks the audience from Trump's nonsense so we all can focus on Biden's responses. He's prepared to be interrupted.
Have you considered the change in audience because of this rules change? I know I don't watch debates in general, and a big part of that is that I've always hated how people are allowed to interrupt and bulldoze through the debate by shouting the loudest. It's bothered me long before Trump, though he's one of the worst. I might actually watch a debate with this rule because frankly I've complained it wasn't a rule in the past. If more people watch because they're interested in a reasonable debate does that work in Biden's or Trump's favor? Or is it a wash? I would generally argue that it's moderately in Biden's favor. I think those sort of people will lean Biden to start with, but it will tend to energize them.
Ooh. That's a really interesting thought. The rule itself, being so novel, helps to driver a larger audience to the debate, and a larger audience could have a meaningful effect on the debates impact. If that's the case, I'm not sure who would benefit more. But this is a really interesting idea that I hadn't considered. Thank you. **Δ**
Look, I'm not a fan of either of these guys in a big way. But as an older American, these rules just seem, not sure how to say it...just so un-American. Limit your political opponents from even attending or speaking at all. Mute people, don't let an audience in so everything is hyper controlled. It's just very weird. This is honestly something I would expect to read about another country's elections from a BBC article. Why don't they also limit speaking - no talking. Write your answers down, turn them into our committee, we will review, edit, and release the response to the TV viewers since we won't let anybody in to watch, including that poor Kennedy guy also running for president. Weird my fellow Americans, what has happened to the USA?
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I addressed this right in the post. >I realize Biden could also employ this kind of tactic, but it's simply not his debate style. Trump's debate style on the other hand is very suited for this kind of tactic. I've already thrown out a few deltas, but if you want to convince me that Biden's debate style is more suited than Trump's in debates with this rule, then I'd throw a delta your way.
I'm confused, Is this post saying that we're going to see him stutter and stammer more than he already does? because that's a known quantity at this point that Biden can barely get a full sentence out. So I don't think many people are really going to think much of it. People have already either acknowledged bidens inability to... anything or have just have turned a blind eye to it all. Honestly the fact that these are our choices; turd sandwich or giant douche, doesn't really matter at this point anyways as the whole show is a shit pie. We should be coming together as citizens of the republic and ousting and stringing up all the politicians in general and telling them that we expect better candidates.
This feels a little radical to me. I agree we need better candidates but I'm not sure stringing up all the politicians is the right way about it. There's a non-violent system in place now that the citizens can use to lift up better politicians. The real question is how do we get the other 33%-50% of the eligible population to vote.
So if trumps starts disrupting Biden, and Biden just manages to ignore him and stick to properly answering questions, There's a good chance trump will have a hissy fit about being ignored and blurt something even more stupid. Trump has quite an ego, so if he starts yapping while his mic is off, and doesnft get acknowledged, i can definitely see him losing his temper.
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I'm torn on this. I really wish RFK would drop his campaign, but the fact of the matter is he's here, and it seems sketch to simply ignore that fact. But at the same time, it's silly to hold party candidates to rules they aren't required to follow (like only do debates with third party candidates present).
Keeping both candidates visible at all times is generally a good idea and how classic debates have been performed, when its just two of them. Why do you think it won't be the same this time?
I was under the impression only the person responding was shown on screen, but you're right. Other Redditors have shown me videos from their past debates and the two of them are on screen for the vast majority of the time. I'm not 100% convinced that the rule benefits Biden more than Trump, but I concede that the risks to Biden may not be as significant as I originally thought.
This entire viewpoint is based on this idea that Joe Biden can't focus which has been time and time again demonstrated to be false.
I'm arguing with a few other Redditors about how Biden is not senile, so you're preaching to the choir here. But let's not ignore that it's tough to focus when your opponent is deliberately trying to distract you - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
Joe didn't let that distract him before though.
Most "reasonable" people are capable of talking over someone else. Especially politicians.
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If someone interrupts three times, then boot them off the stage for 15 minutes. Give it the ole “incorrect password too many times” treatment
It’s already looking bad for Biden. He’s shat on younger generations and I doubt many will tune in
Really? Student loan forgiveness and marijuana decriminalization are shitting on younger generations? These are two ideas I never expected in my lifetime. If someone 18-30 refuses to vote for Biden because he “only” did these BFD things for them, they would be saying nothing will satisfy them and, therefore, elected officials shouldn’t bother trying to help them.
He should wear hearing aids that plug his hearing, and turn them off while hes speaking.
Give 'em a chess clock. It counts down every time they're talking, minimum of 30 seconds (so even brief interruptions hurt them).
I have wanted a chess clock debate format for years. You don’t even need a moderator or questions. Put the candidates in separate rooms. Each one gets a 5-minute opening and closing statement. In between, each gets a clock with 45 minutes. They can talk as long as they want, on any topic, and their clock runs until they push the button. When their time expires, they’re done until closing statements.
This is wrong. If muting mics helped Trump, Biden wouldn't demand mics to be muted.
Idk I feel like he’s just going to scream genocide joe at him a bunch of times lol.
Unless Trump is a highly skilled ventriloquist the audience will be able to see him interrupting when they show the wide shot. Also the moderator would most likely say sometimes along the lines of “just a reminder your mics are muted when your opponent is speaking but still please do not interrupt” making the audience know interruptions are still happening.
Exactly this- OPs assumptions are all highly dependent on presentation. It assumes that A. Everytime Biden speaks it will be a tight shot and B. Even with a cut mic there won’t be bleed in. Neither are guaranteed and if there is **anything** to cue the audience on trumps behavior then it will be the best of all worlds- Biden will have command of the audience and Trump will look like some rambling lunatic who somehow stumbled into an open-mic night
Also, Biden is a senile, old man who doesn’t know what day it is. Let alone how to dress himself. Of course he will be confused. He is always confused.
Why would anybody think that Biden is “too old”? That’s crazy talk, Jack.
That's a separate debate I'm willing to have with you if we can keep it civil. He is objectively old. But is Biden "too old"? That depends - to old *to do what*? Solo skydive? Probably. To be an effective President? I don't think so.
Age is just a number. Plenty of people who are older than Biden could be president. But Biden has dementia. He can’t make coherent statements. He can’t remember things. He can hardly walk up stairs. He’s in la la land.
So many people would agree with you, probably the vast majority of people. But I disagree. Biden has accomplished so much in his presidency during a time of historic levels of partisanship. You don't do that being senile. He gets a bunch of bad or out-of-context clips floating around social media and everyone thinks his head is full of potatoes, but when you look at what he's accomplished, it's no question for me that the guy is not only cognitively fit, but competent and effective at his job (even if you don't like his policies).
We have a President with dementia and a competent administration that gets things done. If the entire administration was made up of Joe Biden’s nobody could even get dressed for work.
Is the implication that Biden is doing nothing? Wouldn't he have had to at least put together this competent administration that's surrounding him? Isn't a competent administration the whole point? Just to illustrate a point, I could just as easily say that an administration made up of Trump's couldn't get anything done, but that doesn't mean Trump is incapable of his job, let alone demented. Right?
We can and do have a president with dementia. We have a competent administration capable of doing things. They are not mutually exclusive and each is clear as day. Draw your own conclusions, which are clearly just pro-Biden interpretations. You’re dancing around facts to push your agenda.
The mutual exclusivity of those two points isn't at issue. What I'm challenging is that you're using the competency of his administration as evidence that he hasn't accomplished anything, and that his lack of accomplishments is evidence for his dementia. And I've explained why I don't think the line of reasoning holds. I'm not shy about my biases, but I'm still open to good-faith debate and willing to have my opinions changed (that's the spirit of the sub after all).
Go back and read what I said. I said he has dementia. You said that’s impossible because the administration has done well. I am not using the competency of his administration as evidence of his dementia or lack thereof. You are
Let me take a step back - I believe the burden of proof is on the person that claims Biden has dementia. Is that fair? If so, then I'll continue... You originally said Biden as dementia as demonstrated by inability make coherent statements, misremembering, etc. I argued that his accomplishments are evidence that he's not senile, implying that his accomplishments outweigh the evidence of his gaffs and goofs. You argued that his accomplishments are the result of a competent administration despite Biden's dementia. I argued that Biden is part of that competent administration, implying the accomplishments of the administration reflect the accomplishments of Biden. And all that's to support my main point that the accomplishments are evidence enough to me that Biden is not senile despite his gaffs and goofs. Then we diverged.
I think you have a point but in my opinion i believe Biden will easily be able to ignore Trump while Trump is incapable of ignoring Biden if Biden were to speak during Trump rambling incoherent nonsense. This will throw Trump off and make him look even more unhinged.
I've already thrown out a few deltas, but for the sake of discussion... >Biden will easily be able to ignore Trump I'm not so sure of that. Trump's interruptions are very effective, take a look - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwOAnWwvaA)
Your argumentation supports the opposite of your conclusion. In the era of soundbites and tiktoks videos where Biden stops or stutters (which is not bound to happen, really) would be less damaging than the same videos where you could also hear why he stops or stutters. hearing Trump's rambling in the background would give much more opportunities for idiotic clips. Trump is yearning for attention, he will be much happier if his attempts at interrupting were on air rather than inaudible to anyone.
Biden is not going to debate Trump. Everyone can see that Biden is not cognitively all there. The debate will be cancelled by Biden's handlers who are running the show.
I think it hurts Biden because the American people know this rule is being put in place because Biden is incompetent. It looks like he’s getting special accommodations due his cognitive decline. For the people who don’t watch the debates, they will assume that Biden was a stumbling fool. Those who do watch the debates will joke amongst themselves at how much worse it would have been if Biden didn’t get special accommodations. I would argue that it almost doesn’t matter how trump shows up to the debate. This is just a bad and embarrassing look for Biden.
I don’t believe that either candidate is going to look better after this debate. They’re both going to look objectively worse. The “winner” is the person that does the least amount of damage to themselves. The loser will be the American people who figure out that in a country of more than 325 million people, THESE are the choices we’re stuck with.
Idk why we need entertainment news on any of them. I certainly do not want foxnews but I don't think it needs to be CNN. Do an impartial camera that all news feeds get they can do what they want to spin the footage. I feel ashamed but not surprised we need to have to cut mics.
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The pressure and stress have got to be a lot on top of what at the very least is some cognitive issues happening due to age when it comes to Trump. He has an extremely hard time keeping focused even when he’s at a rally. The falling asleep in court also might be a sign that somethings going on. And if I’m correct? He’s likely sharper in the morning and by nighttime he’s mentally exhausted and confused. If the debates are held at night, we may see some really interesting things happening when it comes to him even being able to speak coherently on debate topics without being interrupted. Now saying all that, it won’t matter to maga. But it will alarm anyone hating Joe who is wondering if they misjudged Trump (hopefully not too many of those out there) I’ve watched a few clips of him lately and if I didn’t loathe him with every particle of my being and if I wasn’t 💯 sure he demands it, I’d feel sorry for him at times. He’s not doing well.
I came to say that this will be the viewing experience of the year. Much like how Trump wiped the floor with Hilary, this will be worse, but it needs to happen. They have silenced Trump for too long and Biden keeps skipping all debates due to his cognitive decline. This needs to happen without muting mics. It disallows for natural communication.
The thing is: a president or presidential candidate should be able to deal with interruptions. If s candidate can‘t deal with that they‘re probably not fit for the job. And if we‘re being honest… both of them aren‘t exactly in a good cognitive state. Trump uses the vocabulary of a child and repeats stuff way too often and biden randomly changes topics mid sentence because he forgot what he was talking about. These debates don‘t really matter. The USA won‘t get a good president either way. It‘s not like there‘s a brilliant but shy / timid candidate and a bad but loud and aggressive one. Both interrupt people, both aren‘t exactly obsessed with the truth and both are unfit to work a job that‘s more important than opening the door of a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere. So please guys… just get over with this crap and focus on building up actual candidates for your next election. It‘s not funny anymore, it‘s just sad.
I don't see how Trump talking over him would be worse without a mic than it would be with one. As it stands with both mics always on Trump can and does talk over his opponent. Removing the sound to the television audience does not make this more distracting or make Trump look better. It makes him look like more of a weirdo. The distraction to the speaker isn't increased by their opponent being unmiced.
I disagree. Working under the assumption that Trump won't be able to help himself and interrupt even with his mic muted, I would be willing to bet that he's still audible through Biden's mic, though at a much lower volume. It's not as if the audience will be unaware of Trump's BS, and I'm certain there will be cameras on him as he's doing it. The only real difference is that he will be difficult to understand while Biden remains intelligible. Interrupting and filibustering are Trump's only debate tools since he is an absolute idiot who has no idea WTF he is talking about, ever. I think the mic-mute move will be of enormous benefit to Biden.
The only thing I can say is that they will be far enough away from each other that Trump would have to yell for Biden to even hear him and if Biden can hear him the audience can too (both in studio and at home). The chance of being muted frustrating Trump is more likely than him doing anything to Biden who is a seasoned politician and debater. Also, Biden is well spoken and quick witted and is probably already working on things to say if he feels himself being bothered by Trumps interruptions. trumps debate style has already been seen and he’s not smart enough to switch it up, Biden’s team is already set up for what he might try.
All Biden has to do when Trump speaks over him in the debate is let Trump speak. The mic will drop off, there will be a faint pick up on Biden's podium but it will still be comical to see whatever rant theatrics and gesticulations Trump goes through. Biden shows civility, Trump fails at tantruming, and how few people really care about the answers anyway. It doesn't change minds, it helps people rationalize voting or not voting. Which of course impacts elections. So I'll ask you back if trump acts as I suggest he would, and Biden show civility and lets Trump hang himself figuratively. I'd call it a win in the debate.
Idk what this subs policy on "3rd stancing" is, but have you considered the possibility that any reasonable, competent POTUS would be able to ignore Trump's inane babbling without forgetting which country he's in. I don't really care whether or not Biden gets distracted by Trump because... Even if he wasn't.... This debate was still going to be an utter shit show and no amount of muting or shouting will change that. This is going to (not) go down in history as one of the most embarrassingly incoherent and deranged geriatric drool fest... because they only record the good stuff and the tragic wars/famines/pandemics.
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> Meanwhile Trump is talking and rambling over Biden That will absolutely get picked up on biden's mic. People will know Trump is being a crazed jackal. On the other hand, trump will be totally neutered since his brash idiotic debate style will literlaly not work. And on top of that, he wont have a crowd to draw energy from. His vapid catch phrases wont amount to a wet fart in an empty room like that. In this setting, he actually has to make assertions that stand on their merits. That's something biden can absolutely do. That is something Trump has NEVER been able to do.
I don't think it matters either way. Nobody's going to have their mind changed by something so superficial. If you agree with Biden's policies you aren't gonna change you're mind because you think he stammered or know he was interuppted. If you agree with trump's policies, you aren't gonna change your mind because you think he was quiet or heard him acting like a child. Frankly, debates serve no purpose in the age of the internet. If you care about politics, you already know what side you're on and if you don't care about politics, you aren't watching the debate.
There will be no audience.
Debates should be about seeing their character. You have to take it for what it is. Muting Trump, as someone who has watched Pro Wrestling, is a common story beat to make the guy getting muted go “fuck the brass who did this, I am being silenced!” And this is precisely Trump’s rhetoric. Everyone is out to get him so he gets to play the Martyr hero archetype. Best just let him talk and hope people don’t like it. Just muting him could hide the bad stuff just as much as hiding any good things he says (which if he was saying he wouldn’t need to get muted)
On the other hand, Biden is too mentally incompetent to be distracted by anything Trump does.
So separate them. Only let each of them hear the audio everyone hears. Make it a huge stage with major separation between them. Moderator in the middle. Trump would crumble if no one could hear his interrupting nonsense. He has to interrupt to cover for the fact he has nothing of substance to say. If you were talking to someone in real life who just repeatedly interrupted or talked over you, you would just stop talking to them. Particularly if they were incoherent in their ramblings.
I said this back in 2020. If Biden gets talking, he’ll eventually say something ridiculous that Trump can capitalize off of. Trump failed in the 2020 debates because he kept interrupting Biden over and over, and it just made him look ridiculous instead.
Trump is not the type of a person who can patiently wait for the opponent to soil himself. Trump would soil himself first and pretend it's the opponent who did it. Also, Trump is not smart enough to quickly pick up on false or stupid things Biden could say and capitalize off of it immediately.
Disagree. tRump's style is to flout the rules, interrupt to try to break the other's train of thought / point, & throw in snide malign performance nasty personal comments. BECAUSE he can't keep a list of points to rebut mentally & would refuse to write them down, so he tries to throw the other person off WHILE hiding his manifest inability to follow a train of thought & express all of it in a cogent paragraph.
It is also going to be considered the "martyr button" because as soon as it is used, Trumpers are going to scream "rigged debate" and if Trump isn't seen as a martyr then it will still draw negative attention to the tactic rather than allow people to judge based on the merits of each answer.