With the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump now only hours away, CNN — the network hosting the debate at its Atlanta headquarters — is revealing what the conditions that both candidates have agreed to will actually look like on stage.
“CNN This Morning” co-anchor Victor Blackwell posted a demonstration to the social media platform X late Wednesday showing how each candidate’s microphone will be muted when his turn to speak ends.
While both candidates agreed to the setup, it appears to target Trump, considering that the bias of the CNN mediators is already well known — and the network has an interest in making sure the president is not embarrassed when he says something nonsensical or outright lies about how great the past four years have supposedly been.
CNN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
Each man’s microphone will be muted when it’s not his turn to speak. @Phil_Mattingly and I demonstrate what that will look and sound like. pic.twitter.com/u0uayKxZ7L
— Victor Blackwell CNN (@VictorBlackwell) June 27, 2024
As Blackwell explained in the clip, the candidates will be able to see when they have a hot mic with two green lights on their podium lit up. Those lights are off when the microphone is turned off.
Blackwell demonstrated how well the muting function works by having CNN’s chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly try to talk over him with a muted microphone, to no avail.
While the concept is good in a vacuum, anyone with any inkling of who CNN shows bias against knows why this mechanism is being used.
CNN does not want Trump to humiliate Biden.
Conservative activist Philip Anderson was quick to call foul.
“They are rigging it so that Biden doesn’t get completely humiliated,” he wrote in a post on X. “It’s beyond obvious.”
They are rigging it so that Biden doesn’t get completely humiliated.
It’s beyond obvious
— Philip Anderson (@VoteBidenOut) June 26, 2024
Another commenter called the arrangement, “ridiculous” as anyone who’s been following political discourse can see that CNN is terrified of Trump being given free rein to voice his criticisms of Biden.
“CNN is 100% rigging this debate,” he wrote. “Here’s how their ridiculous microphone setup will work.”
CNN is 100% rigging this debate. Here’s how their ridiculous microphone setup will work. pic.twitter.com/eJNOX4ha9F
— Dominic Michael Tripi (@DMichaelTripi) June 26, 2024
The mute button could also be used to protect Biden from embarrassing himself.
Just last week, MSNBC’s Elise Jordan admitted Biden cannot have a “senior moment” while on stage.
While the American people have been well aware of Biden’s mental deficiencies for some time, only recently have mainstream networks been forced to admit it.
What about the moderators?
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are unlikely to be calling this one down the middle as much as CNN would like you to believe it. Both have an established history of anti-Trump comments.
Will the debate be moderated fairly?
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After CNN declared Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Fox News reported at the time, Tapper greeted the news with a statement that disparaged Trump’s time in office as “a time of several significant and utterly avoidable failures.”
“But now the Trump presidency is coming to an end, to an end, with so many squandered opportunities and ruined potential, but also an era of just plain meanness,” he said, before alluding to the President Richard Nixon’s resignation from the White House in 1974.
“It must be said to paraphrase President Ford, for tens of millions of our fellow Americans: Their long national nightmare is over.”
Bash, meanwhile, has also been harshly critical of Trump on air, as the New York Post reported Monday.
CNN is clearly sensitive to the criticisms of its moderators.
On Monday, CNN’s Kasie Hunt abruptly cut her interview with Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt when Leavitt brought up Tapper’s history of comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Whether it is the debating mechanisms, a biased network, or biased moderators, it is undeniable that Trump is walking into the hornet’s nest.
Only tonight will reveal how it pans out for both candidates.
