Facebook will help “source” questions online for the town hall-style presidential debate between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the organization behind the debates announced on Wednesday night. The moderators are NBC News’s Lester Holt on September 26, ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper on October 9 (that one is a town-hall-style debate), and Fox News’ Chris Wallace on October 19.
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Still, never before has the internet been used to gather questions from the public for a general election debate, according to Brown. They strike me as generally solid choices. If not the moderator, it will be the candidates, particularly Trump, who is so dominant in his demeanor. “That’s the question that I hear more than any other question, and it might be interesting to ask the candidates, ‘Why do you think it’s come down to you two?'” If journalists aren’t interested in being part of the truth squad, they should find another sport. Wallace, who’ll moderate the last debate – just two weeks before the election – has already said that he doesn’t see his role as fact-checking, otherwise known as calling the candidates on their lies. Get yourself paid, TV networks.
The League, sometimes accused of disorganization, sponsored debates until 1988, at which point the Commission on Presidential Debates, whose board of directors now includes Jenkins, formed.
It was the League of Women Voters that created the criteria a general-election candidate had to meet to participate in the debate, criteria that still stand today: eligibility to run for president under the Constitution, petitioning to be on ballots in enough states to win the electoral college and, most controversially, polling at or above 15 percent nationally.
“That institution … makes it possible for everybody in America at the same time or at any pace they want to now with new technology to see these candidates, the people who will be in this position … the most powerful position in the world”, he said.
Being chosen to host the first-ever Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton Presidential debate is a distinction that Schuster noted sets Hofstra apart from many other Universities in terms of the experiences that they can offer their student body; in addition, she said, it is a responsibility that will be taken extremely seriously considering the fact that the whole world will be watching that day. They both did. Let’s try that kind of thing again, with more follow-through and a stiffer spine.
“It’s so easy to think that sounding tough is the same as being clear”, he told me.
Taking advantage of providing their students the opportunity to be at the ground floor of a history-making event, Schuster said that Hofstra is providing a number of programs leading up to the debate created to enrich the experience for their student body in a number of different ways. The hot-button topics this election cycle – including immigration, national security, combating terrorism, the economy, healthcare, and more – are threatened to be overshadowed by the larger-than life personalities of Trump and Clinton, with charges of corruption, bigotry, and more being levied by each opponent at one another.
Lauer has been publicly excoriated, and rightfully so, for failing to challenge Trump on some of his more outrageous claims.
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Many media watchdogs disagreed with Wallace’s assessment, including Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post media columnist. Previously, she was The New York Times public editor, and the chief editor of The Buffalo News, her hometown paper.
