The Journal. - All Eyes on Biden, Trump – and CNN

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Tonight, two presidents, one current and one former, are set to debate live on CNN. The stakes are high for the candidates and for the network that’s been struggling to win viewers. WSJ’s Isabella Simonetti reports on how CNN is remaking the debate, and Annie Linskey analyzes what the format change could mean for the candidates. Further Reading: - Presidential Debate Carries Great Opportunity—and Risk—for CNN  - Biden-Trump Debate Takes Shape  - We Rewatched the 2020 Trump-Biden Debates. Here’s What We Learned.  Further Listening: - The Downfall of CNN’s CEO  - Behind Closed Doors, Biden’s Age is Showing  - The Origin Story of Trump’s Guilty Verdict  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight, the 2024 presidential election kicks into high gear. In a studio in Atlanta, former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden will face off in their first debate of the year. The two are neck and neck in the polls. I'm honestly, like, really excited

for this debate tonight. Probably more excited than I've been for a debate in a while. I feel like I genuinely don't know what's going to happen. I'm very excited. I think it's going to be a big moment for CNN, which is obviously a network that I pay close attention to. And it'll be interesting to see Trump and Biden engaging with one another on stage and how the moderators handle that challenge. That's our colleague Isabella Simonetti, who covers TV networks like CNN.

We're both so excited because there's a lot of unusual things about this debate. Normally, people want to focus on the spectacle, what the candidates say and how they might say it. We're interested in that too, of course. But this year, the role that CNN is playing has also taken center stage. Unlike in past years, CNN will have control. And the network is making some pretty big changes to the rules. control. And the network is making some pretty big changes to the rules. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Thursday, June 27th. Coming up on the show, CNN gives the presidential debate a makeover. Attention all soccer fans. From Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food,

and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. For CNN, the debate tonight is a chance at redemption.

Back in 2023, when former CEO Chris Licht was running the network, a town hall featuring Donald Trump put CNN in the spotlight. That town hall was considered by many pundits to be a disaster. Chris Licht was the CEO of CNN, and a big part of his mission was to repair CNN's relationship with Republicans and Trump supporters, and he wanted to address concerns about a liberal bias

and rethink how CNN was covering politics. And part of that strategy included hosting a town hall with Donald Trump and CNN's Caitlin Collins, which featured a live audience. Would you give Ukraine weapons and funding? I was impeached by a crazy woman named Nancy Pelosi. The question here is, would you give Ukraine weapons and funding? He frequently interrupted Caitlin Collins.

It's very simple. You're a nasty person, I'll tell you that. And some people were, within CNN, were upset about how the event went over and even the fact that the network chose to do it in the first place. There were top anchors within CNN voicing concerns about Chris Licht's leadership of the network. Former CNN president Jeff Zucker has persistently blasted the network's new chief, Chris Licht, who's overseen the embattled major news network as it continues to lose ratings and viewership. Former CNN reporter Rebecca Buck tweeted, I don't think Zucker would have let this happen.

Criticism of Licht continued to grow after a blistering profile of him was published in The Atlantic. He left CNN shortly after, in June of 2023. He left CNN and the network entered this kind of limbo period where they didn't have a leader, and then Mark Thompson officially joined as CEO in October. Mark Thompson is a media veteran. He was previously CEO of the New York Times and head of the BBC in London. And when he took over CNN, his primetime viewership had been falling for years. So if the prior CEO, Chris Licht, if his goal was to try to repair

relationships with some of the Trump voters in the Trump world out there, what is Mark Thompson's strategy and vision been for CNN? So I think Chris Licht was out there being very vocal about how more Republicans needed to go on CNN. We need to repair the idea that CNN is a left-leaning network. And Mark Thompson came in and on his first day in a video message to staff, he said something along the lines of, let's just focus on covering the news and doing our jobs. He didn't diagnose any problem with CNN's political coverage or news coverage.

The debate will be Thompson's first chance to prove his vision for CNN. And it took some work to land it. For more than 30 years, debates have been set up by a nonpartisan commission called the Commission on Presidential Debates. But this year, both campaigns bypassed the commission and made a deal directly with the networks. They wanted the debates to happen sooner rather than in the fall, which is what the commission had scheduled.

So what's unique about this debate is that CNN is in charge of the rules as opposed to the debate commission. in charge of the rules as opposed to the debate commission. And CNN has made a number of rules that are very different than in years past, which is part of what will make this event so interesting. What are those rules? So CNN has decided to mute the microphones of the candidates when it's not their turn to speak. Biden and Trump won't be able to interrupt one another and the focus will be more on the questions at hand rather than getting the last word. And the debate will have commercial breaks,

which hasn't happened before. There will be no opening statements and there will be no live audience. No live audience, meaning no more boos, clapping, or cheers. Both candidates agree to the rules. Are there any risks for CNN and Mark Thompson in hosting this debate? I think there's always risk. I mean, this is going to garner millions and millions of viewers. It's a high profile event. Everyone knows that CNN is hosting this debate. So it's a big moment for them. I would have to argue that the pros outweigh the cons. The risk is that, which is inevitable, is that people are unhappy with the questions the moderators are asking. There's an issue with how the rules play out or executed.

There's criticism about how the rules have affected the substance of the debate. So we'll just have to see how that plays out. But I think there's no world in which Mark Thompson and the top brass at CNN would have said no to this. Does an event like this really move the needle for CNN? How does it actually help CNN's bottom line in the long run? I think it depends. It's a way to get CNN back on people's radars, at least from a linear or traditional television perspective. Everyone knows what the CNN brand is, obviously, but not a lot of people are watching CNN on TV compared to its two main rivals, MSNBC and Fox. And I don't think one debate is going to completely change that or can completely change that. But it will give the public a chance to see how the CNN moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash do their jobs and whether or not people think that they're fair and whether they think

it's good TV. And that could lead some people to be more interested in watching CNN in the future. Or I'm sure there will be some people who turn on CNN on Thursday night and don't watch it again for a very long time. So what impact will all these new rules have on the debate itself? That's next. options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Need a great reason to get up in the morning well what about two right now get a small organic

fair trade coffee and a tasty bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only five dollars at a and w's in ontario Remember how excited Isabella and I were about this debate? Well, when I told our colleague Annie Linsky about my excitement, she had a slightly different reaction. Oh, really? Interesting. Annie's covered D.C. for a decade. And maybe one of the reasons she's less excited than me is because she just got done re-watching all the debates from 2020. You just recently re-watched those debates, which I'm

sorry that you had to do that. But what did you come away with from that re-watch? It was fascinating to go back and watch them again. And you could see the habits that they have for dealing with each other and the strategies that they have for dealing with each other and the strategies that they have for dealing with each other. For instance, Trump tried to get under Biden's skin by constantly interrupting him. And Biden would often ignore Trump and address voters by talking directly into the camera. Tell us about how they're going to perform it in this debate, because in many ways, these are two different men than they were in 2020,

the last time that they were on stage together. The world has changed significantly in four years. I mean, there was a COVID pandemic four years ago that dominated just even the discussions about the, you know, even the topics are different. You know, the economy was discussed four years ago that dominated just even the discussions about the, you know, even the topics are different. You know, the economy was discussed four years ago, but the word inflation never came up. Abortion barely came up in the debates four years ago. So the issue set will change. In terms of the men, I mean, you know, in their recent public events, you know, both of them have had a number of verbal gaffes. So I think,

you know, these, both of these men, they're already elderly men and they're four years older than they were last time they met together. So why is the debate scheduled the way that it is this year? Yeah, the debate is much earlier this year than in a typical election year. Now, the Biden campaign, they were the ones who sort of instigated and challenged and set up this debate in June. And their data is showing that a lot of voters have not really accepted that the decision is going to be between Biden and Trump.

And there are a lot of voters who just believe that it's going to be a different set of candidates on the ballot in November. Yeah. They just haven't locked into the idea that it's really going to be Biden versus Trump. And this is, you know, this is what they're finding. What phase of grief is that or whatever? Like acceptance? I know it's the denial. It's right. Right. They're in denial. They're in that phase of grief. And so they believe that having a big tentpole event like this early is going to sort of cause the campaign to sort of click into focus for voters.

I mean, that's what they're hoping to achieve on the debate stage. And he says CNN's debate rules will likely have an impact on how the debate goes. Like for the candidates, having a studio audience was sometimes helpful. You can sort of draw energy from that audience. Now, the audience is always told not to applaud and so forth. But you're speaking to a room of people and you can get a sense for, are they paying attention to you? How are you doing? You get some sort of instant human feedback from an audience.

In this scenario, it's just going to be a TV studio. The second sort of major difference is that the moderators are going to have tools at their disposal to prevent the kinds of interruptions that Trump was really known for in 2020. You know, there will be an ability for the microphones to be muted. That was true in the second debate in 2020. But in this case, just because it's the CNN studio, they are going to have so much control over the sound and the camera angles. So they will be able to much more effectively cut off a candidate who is trying to interrupt or who is breaking the rules that the campaigns have agreed to.

It's funny, Biden's team is the one that insisted on these rules. But in some ways, they really do or have the potential to benefit Trump because it keeps him sort of, it creates these guardrails for him that prevent some of his worst instincts from coming forth. So it's a little unclear who's going to ultimately benefit from them, but it does make for, in some ways, a less lively debate. So do you think this debate is a big deal? Oh, for sure. I think it's a huge deal. I think it's an enormous deal for a number of reasons.

One, to your point earlier, this debate is occurring much sooner in the calendar than previous debates have. So that if you don't watch this debate tonight, you are still going to hear it and see it because it's going to be sliced and diced and replayed on every single possible device or social media app that you're looking at for the next, you know, three or four months. So there will be no way to avoid parts of this debate. But it also means then, though, that like if one of the candidates has a bad performance, that is going to be the thing

that voters are going to keep hearing about for the next several months. Correct. Correct. I mean, what you always want in a debate or in life, of course, is a flawless performance. But in this case, it's particularly important because there's just so much time for these mistakes to be replayed. You know, to your question about the impact on voters, many voters have decided who they are

going to vote for. But a lot of voters are, A, not excited about this race. So this is an opportunity for Joe Biden and Donald Trump to get their voters more excited about the race. So this is an opportunity for Joe Biden and Donald Trump to get their voters more excited about the race and get them more excited about themselves, to actually sell themselves. And then it's also that little sliver in the middle is significant. And reaching out to that sliver and making some sort of argument to them could very well be the difference between who wins and loses in Michigan or in Pennsylvania, which could decide the race. That's all for today, Thursday, June 27th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

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