Atlanta, United States:

There will be no studio audience, depriving candidates of the momentum that comes from ginning up supporters. Microphones will cut out when a candidate’s speaking time is over. Thursday night’s presidential debate will not be business as usual.

CNN, which is hosting President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump for their first debate of the 2024 campaign in Atlanta, wants to avoid the chaos seen when the two men squared off in 2020.

Here are some facts about the 90-minute debate, a key moment in the race for the White House, but one whose impact is difficult to predict.

 Averting mayhem 

In their first war of words four years ago, Trump repeatedly cut off the veteran Democrat, launched into lengthy diatribes and taunted his rival, who ended up shouting at one point: “Will you shut up, man?”

It was hardly the height of presidential decorum.

To cut down on the hijinks, CNN has set up a series of rules, to which both campaigns agreed.

Among the most notable: When the candidates take the stage at the network’s Atlanta studios at 9:00 pm (0100 GMT Friday), there will be no one in the audience.

Microphones will be muted except for the candidate asked to speak. There will be two commercial breaks during the showdown between 78-year-old Trump and 81-year-old Biden, the two oldest presumptive White House nominees in history.

Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, both regular CNN on-air presenters, will “use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network said.

Trump gets last word 

Biden won the coin toss, allowing him to choose either his podium position or whether he preferred to speak first or second in final statements.

The incumbent chose the podium on the viewers’ right, and Trump opted to have the last word.

No live fact-checking 

CNN has not revealed the debate themes and does not plan to fact-check candidate statements in real time — even if Trump repeats the baseless charge that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

For Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, “one problem with a debate that features Donald Trump is that the moderators don’t fact check in real-time, nor should they.”

“It’s highly risky to try to do that and it would be disruptive of the debate if they did,” she told AFP. “The danger is instead of informing, a debate could actually increase the amount of inaccurate knowledge.”

Biden and Trump will not have teleprompters and they cannot bring pre-written notes to the stage, although they will be provided with paper and pen. Consulting with campaign staff during commercial breaks will not be allowed.

Debate airs on all networks 

Both candidates rejected the oversight of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates formed in 1987 to manage such events.

Instead, they made a direct deal with CNN. The news network, now owned by media conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery, afforded its rivals the opportunity to broadcast the debate live in the name of public service, under certain conditions.

The screen must bear the CNN logo and outside commentary is forbidden.

Fox News — which regularly attacks CNN as biased against Trump — plans to hit the airwaves two hours before the event, with talk show hosts Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity providing pre-game insights.

In the past, Hannity has called Tapper a “radical left-wing partisan talk show host masquerading as a journalist.”

 Impact on campaign? 

The debate will certainly be a key moment in the campaign, watched by tens of millions: a record 84 million tuned in to watch Trump’s first battle with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 73 million saw Trump and Biden duke it out in 2020.

But it will not necessarily be a game-changer.

This is the first time a debate has been organized so early in the race, more than four months before Election Day, and even before the candidates have been formally nominated by their respective parties.

“The worry is that the public in the United States doesn’t pay much attention to news in summer,” said Jamieson.

“In general, presidential debates don’t affect a sufficient number of votes to decide the outcome of an election. But when an election is close, as this one may be, debates can play an important role.”

ABC is scheduled to host a second debate on September 10.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President Joe Biden pauses while leaving after delivering remarks on the verdict in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial and on the Middle East, from the State Dining Room of the White House.
| Photo Credit: AP

President Joe Biden said on Friday that Donald Trump being found guilty in his New York hush money case reaffirms “the American principle that no one is above the law,” and he said “it’s reckless” and “dangerous” for his predecessor to suggest the legal system was rigged against him.

“Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. It was a state case, not a federal case and it was heard by a jury of 12 citizens, 12 Americans, 12 people like you,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House, a day after a jury in New York found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts in a case stemming from the 2016 election.

He added that Trump’s “jury’s chosen the same way every jury in America’s chosen,” noted that jurors heard five weeks of evidence and after “careful deliberation” reached “a unanimous verdict: They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.”

The President said Trump could appeal the case “just like everyone else has that opportunity” then pointedly said, “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

“Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years, and it literally is the cornerstone of America,” Mr. Biden said. “The justice system should be respected. And we should never let never allow anyone to tear it down.”

As the President left the podium after his remarks, a reporter shouted if he had any reaction to Trump calling himself a political prisoner and blaming the President directly for what’s happening to him. Mr. Biden stopped and flashed a grin, but did not answer the question.

He similarly didn’t answer when another reporter asked if he thought Trump should appear on November’s ballot.

None of the developments changed Trump’s defiant tone as he looked to galvanize supporters ahead of November. Moments after Biden spoke, Trump sent a fundraising email declaring, “I WAS JUST CONVICTED IN A RIGGED TRIAL. I AM A POLITICAL PRISONER!”

Mr. Biden was at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, marking the anniversary of the 2015 death of his grown son, Beau from brain cancer when the jury reached its verdicts on Thursday, and he offered no personal reaction to the trial at the time. But he returned to Washington on Friday for an event at the White House with the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs, and spoke to reporters about the situation in the Middle East before answering questions about Trump’s case.

In comments to reporters at his namesake tower in Manhattan earlier Friday, Trump tried to cast himself as a martyr, suggesting that if he could be convicted, “They can do this to anyone.”

“I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and save our Constitution. I don’t mind,” Trump said.

Mr. Biden for months had carefully avoided involvement in Trump’s legal drama, looking to keep from feeding into his Republican rival’s claims that his criminal woes were the result of politically motivated prosecutions. But as the New York trial concluded, Mr. Biden’s campaign became far more vocal about it.

His campaign had released a series of innuendo-laced statements that alluded to the trial to attack Trump’s policy positions, and then Mr. Biden himself quipped that he heard Trump was “free on Wednesdays” — the trial’s scheduled day off — in a video statement when he agreed to debate Trump head-to-head.

With closing arguments underway on Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s campaign even showed up outside the Manhattan courthouse with actor Robert De Niro and a pair of former police officers who responded to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, in what it said was an effort to refocus the presidential race on the former President’s role in the riot. That decision came as the campaign felt its message about the stakes of the election was struggling to break through the intense focus on the trial.

Shortly after Thursday’s verdict, Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign sought to keep the focus on the choice confronting voters in November and the impact of a second Trump presidency.

“A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence – and the American people will reject it this November,” Biden spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement.