Now that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are bypassing the typical road taken for presidential debates during an election season, a lot of questions remain on how they will be managed, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Fahrenkopf is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit, independent group that, through federal law, has sponsored every presidential debate since 1988.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, challenged Biden to debate him "anytime, anywhere." Biden's campaign responded with a dictate for two debates on June 27 on CNN and Sept. 10 on ABC.
But Biden's team placed several conditions for the debates to happen, including that the CPD not be involved. Biden's campaign reportedly is upset the CPD allowed extensive crosstalk and interruptions during the 2020 debates between Biden and Trump.
The other conditions include no third-party candidate such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and for the moderators to cut off the candidates' microphones if they speak out of turn.
"What happened was Donald consistently the last month and a half said, 'I'll debate anywhere, anytime,' and so forth under any circumstances," Fahrenkopf told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "What they then did, the Biden campaign, is they put together this very, very strict one-on-one debate, only two debates with a lot of things left out in the open.
"I mean, are there going to be opening remarks, closing remarks? [Are they standing] or are they seated? I mean, there's a million things that we have dealt with in the 33 debates I've lived through over the years that are still out there and no answers yet as to how that's going ... It's going to be interesting to see whether they can do it."
Fahrenkopf said what's most surprising to him is the first debate will happen before most states have any candidates listed on their ballots and weeks before the Republican and Democrat nominating conventions.
"The problem is ... at the time of the first debate ... on that day, June 27, only seven states out of the 50 and the District of Columbia will have completed their ballots as to who's going to be running for president. Only seven states."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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