With just hours to go before the first 2020 Presidential Debate, the Biden team is ignoring a request from the Trump campaign to have a third party inspect each candidate, prior to taking the stage, for ear pieces and hidden communications devices.
The President’s team has indicated he has consented to this kind of inspection. The Biden team has, at this hour, refused to consent or comment on the request.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 29, 2020
This request sent the Progressive-Left into a whirlwind with outlets like Media Matter immediately insisting that the Trump campaign was inferring a conspiracy theory about secret listening devices and political puppeteering.
Fox News homepage features Trump conspiracy theory about alleged secret listening device in Biden's ear https://t.co/mce60KNx6j
— Media Matters (@mmfa) September 29, 2020
President Trump’s re-election team is also on record as wanting Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden to take a drug test before the debate. This request, too, has fallen on deaf ears.
Negotiations on the ground rules for tonight’s first debate are still on-going at this hour.
On the Biden side, his handlers have made the request for two breaks in the debate, one every 30 minutes. Each debate is scheduled to last 90 minutes.
The Biden campaign requested two breaks (one every thirty minutes) during tonight’s program, which was denied by their Trump counterparts, in negotiations over the last several weeks. (3/3)
— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) September 29, 2020
Discussing the matter in an exchange this morning with colleague Bill Hemmer on FOX News, anchor Brett Baier noted that the subject of debate formatting isn’t an issue to be decided by the campaigns.
“The debate commission has always said that it’s 90 minutes straight through, and that’s how they plan for it,” Baier said. “That’s what they told the networks and that’s what we’re planning for as far as our coverage.”
The presidential debates have been, in recent history, events that have caused more controversy than they have revealed insight into the candidates. In the 2016 cycle, then-DNC Chairwoman Donna Bazile was caught funneling ill-gotten debate questions to Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
In 2012, CNN’s Candy Crowley destroyed her credibility and her career when she openly chose sides in the debate between Then-President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
