Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is joking about the decision to include a mute button at the upcoming presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Kimmel weighed in on the decision during a segment of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Tuesday night, where he noted that Thursday night Trump and Biden will go head-to-head at the debate held in Nashville, Tenn.
The late-night host joked that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is cutting down “on all the Potus interruptus [sic].” He then said muting the microphones helps so this debate “doesn’t turn into another senior citizen bum fights video” like the first debate.
“Muting the mics, it’s the same strategy my daughter’s teacher uses for Zoom kindergarten,” he continued.
He then questioned:
“Would a mute button even work for Donald Trump? I feel like if you turn off his microphone, he’ll just pull another one out of his hair or something.”
See Kimmel’s comments below:
Trump and Biden repeatedly clashed during the first debate, making it hard for those tuning in to hear what either of them was saying. According to Fox News’ Chris Wallace — who moderated the first debate — Trump interrupted Biden or Wallace roughly 145 times in the 90 minutes of the debate.
The commission made the announcement on Monday that Trump and Biden will be able to speak without being interrupted in parts of the debate, as one candidate will be muted while the other speaks for two minutes during the start of each 15-minute segment.
Commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf said of muting the microphones at times during an interview on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, “The campaigns agreed early on, going back to June of this year when we announced what the formats were going to be for the… debates. And they both agreed to live with it. It provides, very clearly, that the first four minutes on each of the six segments — each candidate gets to speak for two minutes without interruption. So that’s the rule. And that’s been the rule.”
Pressed by Kilmeade that the audio was “never killed,” Fahrenkopf responded, “No, no. We have never killed audio. And what happened during the last debate is they both violated that rule.”