Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden (D) praised the Commission on Presidential Debate’s (CPD) decision to mute the microphone of the opposing candidate at the start of each segment and added that he believes there should be “more limitations.”
“So for the debate on Thursday, what do you think of this new muting the mic rule?” WISN’s Adrienne Pedersen asked Biden in a Tuesday interview.
“I think it’s a good idea. I think there should be more, more, limitations on us not interrupting one another,” Biden said, attributing his stance to what transpired during the first presidential debate.
“If you noticed last time, according to Chris Wallace, he interrupted the president and me 148 times. I think that’s right, he interrupted Mike, the president interrupted. Mike, I mean, excuse me, Chris Wallace and me 148 times,” Biden said, originally misstating his line.
“And so I hope he’s gonna come prepared to talk about what he’s for,” he continued, guessing that Trump will focus on what he described as “personal attacks”:
And he’s because he doesn’t want to talk about why he’s taking away healthcare at the very time we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Why he has no plan for health care. Why he hasn’t provided the money, allow businesses to have the ability to reopen, why he’s not dealing with unemployment, etcetera. But I’m going to try very hard to focus on the issues that affect the American people and talk to them, and I hope they keep the rule that uninterrupted two minutes answers.
Despite Biden’s appeal to the first debate, it was he who set the precedent of interrupting in the first debate, as detailed by Breitbart News. Even so, Wallace, who interrupted Trump several times himself, remained in denial, stating that Trump bore “primary responsibility for what happened” during the debate.
Before ending the interview, Pedersen asked Biden about the recent reports on Hunter Biden and his alleged involvement in his son’s lucrative foreign business dealings — a topic the president is likely to bring up during Thursday’s debate.
“Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Ron Johnson put out a statement on Homeland Security letterhead saying Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name. Is there any legitimacy to Senator Johnson’s claims?” she asked.
“None whatsoever,” Biden said, calling it a “last-ditch effort” to “smear” his family.
“This is the same garbage Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s henchman — it’s the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family. Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said there’s no basis to this and you know,” Biden said.
“And all, and the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all. Ron should be ashamed of himself,” Biden added.
Biden’s reference to the “former nominee” is regular Trump critic Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) who “criticized Johnson’s probe in September, but was not reacting to the recent revelations about Hunter Biden’s emails,” As Breitbart News reported:
As for the “vast majority of the intelligence people,” over 50 former intelligence officials, led by Obama-era figures James Clapper and John Brennan, released a letter Tuesday claiming that the emails looked like they could be “Russian disinformation.”
Clapper and Brennan — who were leading figures in pushing the Russia collusion hoax against President Donald Trump — admitted that they “do not have evidence” of Russian involvement.
As for the CPD’s decision to mute microphones, commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf defended the move, telling Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade that they are “not changing a rule.”
“All we’re doing is saying you’ve already agreed to no interruptions for that two minutes on each of the six segments, and therefore when someone starts speaking, gets their two minutes, the other microphone is gonna be turned off until the two minutes are up, then the other person gets it,” he said. “That’s it.”
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