He anchors the most-watched nightly news show on United States television.
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NBC’s Lester Holt will moderate the September 26 debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton.
Trump and Clinton will have their first debate, organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, on Monday, Sept. 26 in Hempstead, N.Y.
Before Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump even take to the debate stage Monday evening, there’s a debate over the debate. By the way, Lester is a Democrat.
Holt told The Christian Chronicle, “One of the hard things for people to wrap their arms around – because they flip around the channels and hear all the opinionated liberal hosts and conservative hosts – is what I do working for the mainstream network. Okay? It’s a very unfair system”.
New York State voter registration documents show that Holt has been a registered Republican in the state since 2003.
“I have respect for Lester”, Trump said of the 57-year-old African American who became the NBC Nightly News anchor in 2015. Compare that to the 30.8 million viewers ranging from age 55 and above. And I think it’s incumbent on the moderators in this day and age to push back against candidates with what they say – they can’t just let the candidates to use this as a 90-minute opportunity to tell us their campaign ads.
Now to go into the specifics of why us young people are not as active in our electoral processes; look at the article Millennial’s political capital or my last column the Importance of being a voter.
“Fact checking is best handled outside the context of the moderator”, said Alan Schroeder, whose book, “Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV”, studied the history of the national events. The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond.
Additional topics could be included based on news developments, according to the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. The topics of discussion are “achieving prosperity”, “securing America”, and “America’s direction”. Two other presidential debates and a vice presidential debate have also been scheduled.
Holt, known for his calm and courteous manner, and a bass player in his spare time, probably will have uppermost in mind the recent flap caused by one of his NBC colleagues.
The 2016 debates will no doubt give voters a fireworks show between Trump and Clinton and hopefully Johnson in the second and third debates.
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He was highly criticized, with some accusing him of being ill-prepared, or posing questions that were too easy on Trump or failing to challenge the Republican’s erroneous assertions. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, has complained that all of the debate moderators are Democrats who are biased against him and that “it’s a phony system”. Now more than ever, it’s imperative to watch what these two candidates do in the arena before we go to the polls.
