2020 Race: Fox, NBC to moderate Trump vs. Biden debates

Three debates between will be held from September 29, with conservative and liberal journalists sharing the moderator role.

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced moderators for its four debates this fall between the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets.

Starting at the end of this month, the commission will host three debates between President Trump, a Republican, and former Vice President Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger. There will also be one debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, Mr Biden’s running mate.

The first presidential debate will be hosted by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Sept. 29 in Cleveland. Steve Scully, a senior executive producer and political editor of C-Span Networks, will host an Oct. 15 debate in Miami. Kristen Welker, an anchor and White House correspondent for NBC News, will moderate an Oct. 22 debate in Nashville, Tenn.

The vice presidential debate will be hosted by Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, on Oct. 7 in Salt Lake City.

The Trump campaign in early August asked the commission for a fourth debate between the two presidential nominees, citing an expected increase in voting by mail before Election Day, which is Nov. 3. The commission declined that request, arguing that precedent dictated three presidential debates and that voters would have time to view them all before casting a by-mail ballot. The Trump campaign in a follow-up letter dated Aug. 31 reupped that call for a fourth debate between Messrs. Biden and Trump.

Mr Trump’s campaign, in an unusual move, also publicly proposed a list of about two dozen potential moderators from Fox News, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News, as well as some conservative media personalities. No one from that list was chosen by the commission, though Mr Wallace and Ms Welker are colleagues of some of the people on the Trump campaign list.

“These are not the moderators we would have recommended if the campaign had been allowed to have any input. Some can be identified as clear opponents of President Trump, meaning Joe Biden will actually have a teammate on stage most of the time to help him excuse the radical, leftist agenda he is carrying,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, without specifying which moderators the campaign saw as objectionable.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said: “As Joe Biden has said for months — without farcical antics — he looks forward to participating in the debates set by the commission, regardless of who the independently chosen moderators are.”

Commission co-chairs Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., Dorothy S. Ridings and Kenneth Wollack said: “We are grateful to these experienced journalists, who will help ensure that the general election presidential debates continue to serve their unique educational purpose of helping the public learn about the candidates. Each individual brings great professionalism to moderating and understands that the purpose of the 2020 debate formats is to facilitate in-depth discussion of major topics.”

The commission announced in June that both the first and third presidential debates will be divided into six segments, each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced at least one week before the debate. The second presidential debate will be in the form of a town-hall style meeting, in which the candidates will field questions from Florida voters.

The Wall St Journal