Changes expected for next debate after first-round ugliness

‘I just hope there’s a way the commission can control the ability of us to answer the question without interruption.’

Following the disastrous presidential debate on Tuesday, the group that sponsors the event intends to roll out a few changes aimed “to maintain order” during the next faceoff between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.  

The presidential debate commission wants to prevent a repeat of the chaos that erupted between the candidates in Cleveland on Tuesday night. As noted by CNBC, Trump and Biden frequently ignored moderator Chris Wallace’s rules, talked over each other, and traded jabs by name-calling. At one point, the former vice president told the ex-reality TV star, “Will you shut up, man?”

The most memorable moment from the debate came when Trump refused to denounce white supremacy, and he called on the often violent alt-right group Proud Boys to “stand down, and stand by,” which members took as the green light to live out their fantasy to fight antifa in Trump’s defense. 

As reported by NBC, Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs posted after the debate that he was “standing by,” and that Trump “basically said to go f— them up.”

Read More: Biden breaks single-hour record for donations after contentious debate

“President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA… well sir! we’re ready!!” Biggs wrote.

.@GStephanopoulos: "I have to speak personally here…that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen in my life." https://t.co/5Bl4Ob3O2t #Debates2020 pic.twitter.com/FxMlSbshiw

— ABC News (@ABC) September 30, 2020

Wallace, a longtime Fox News anchor, attempted to host an orderly 90-minute debate and at times he struggled to maintain control.  At one point he told Trump, “the country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions. I’m appealing to you, sir, to do that.”

Trump lashed out at Wallace many times during the debate and shortly thereafter on Twitter.

In the end, Biden described the political theatrics as “a national embarrassment.”

The commission said in a statement Wednesday that it will soon implement changes to its format, as the initial debate “made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.” 

The commission added that it “will be carefully considering the changes that it will adopt and will announce those measures shortly.”

The group is considering giving the moderator the ability to cut off a candidate’s microphone while his opponent is talking, ABC 7 reports.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said the commission was “only doing this because their guy got pummeled last night. President Trump was the dominant force and now Joe Biden is trying to work the refs.”

Read More: World reacts with surprise, worry to 1st Biden-Trump debate

Trump also addressed the planned changes in a tweet, writing “Try getting a new Anchor and a smarter Democrat candidate!”

Try getting a new Anchor and a smarter Democrat candidate! https://t.co/B9heSVV1OJ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2020

At a campaign event in Ohio, Biden told reporters he’s in full support of changes to the debate format.

“I just hope there’s a way in which the debate commission can control the ability of us to answer the question without interruption,” Biden said. “I’m not going to speculate on what happens in the second or third debate.”

In a post-debate chat with The Times, Wallace said, “As a practical matter, even if the president’s microphone had been shut [on Tuesday] he still could have continued to interrupt, and it might well have been picked up on Biden’s microphone, and it still would have disrupted the proceedings in the hall.”

The next presidential debate between Trump and Biden is scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami. A third debate is slated for Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville.

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How Trump torpedoed the presidential debates

For more than 30 years, the Commission on Presidential Debates managed to keep the peace between Republican and Democratic nominees and set the terms of engagement in an official, serious and highly structured way.

On Tuesday, in the span of less than two hours, President Donald Trump laid waste to those long standing norms and traditions.

In the aftermath of a chaotic and widely-panned debate marked by Trump’s repeated interruptions of his opponent, falsehoods and persistent squabbling with the moderator, the commission announced Wednesday it’s considering as-yet-unspecified changes to “ensure a more orderly discussion.”

The commission’s brief statement didn’t mention either candidate by name, but it was clear the move was intended to crack down on the disruptions largely, though not exclusively, instigated by the president.

For the COPD, it was a tacit admission of failure. For Trump, it offered a capstone for his four-year campaign attacking the legitimacy of what he refers to as the “so-called Commission on Presidential Debates.”

“They’re only doing this because their guy got pummeled last night.” the Trump campaign responded in a statement. “President Trump was the dominant force and now Joe Biden is trying to work the refs. They shouldn’t be moving the goalposts and changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

The suggestion that the commission was contemplating rules changes at Biden’s behest was in keeping with Trump’s grievance-driven politics, serving as a campaign-sustaining elixir for a candidate who thrives on chaos and picking fights with the political establishment. It’s also a preview of what’s to come for the next 34 days on the campaign trail as Trump, trailing in the polls, seeks to cement the narrative that the fix is in and the system is rigged against him in his bid to win a second term.

“He’s a grievance guy. Everybody’s always out to screw him,” Nelson Warfield, a veteran Republican strategist and debate-prep specialist, said in describing Trump’s mindset and his appeal to his base. “He wins despite the establishment colluding against him.”

Trump’s efforts to undermine the commission date back before his first debate with Hillary Clinton, when in August 2016 he claimed without evidence that Clinton and the commission colluded to schedule the first two debates during NFL football games to minimize the size of the viewing audience.

Trump then raised the issue of a biased debate, saying he wanted a “fair moderator” — an issue he resurrected in his clashes Tuesday night with moderator Chris Wallace, the gravelly voiced, no-nonsense host of “Fox News Sunday.”

Despite his objections, Trump ultimately participated in the 2016 debates. But in October of that year, after a debate in which he was widely considered to be the debate loser in snap polls and focus groups, he attacked the commission once again, suggesting that studio sound issues were designed to undermine him.

The commission remained off his radar for another three years, until in December 2019 — not long before the first Democratic primary votes — Trump began bashing it for alleged bias and being “stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers.” He mused publicly about doing more debates and circumventing the commission.

None of that came to pass. Behind-the-scenes negotiations between the campaigns and the commission this month remained out of the public eye and the first debate took shape without any drama.

“They accepted the venues. They accepted the format. They accepted the moderators. There was an uncharacteristic lack of Trumpian nonsense,” said Philippe Reines, who played Trump in Clinton’s debate preparations in 2016. “They didn’t work the refs behind the scenes. But obviously, it gave way.”

The commission — a bipartisan nonprofit composed of political, media and educational figures — declined to comment for this article.

A sign of what was to come Tuesday night occurred the morning of the debate. The Trump campaign amplified a baseless conspiracy theory that Biden’s campaign wanted the Democrat to wear an earpiece so he could have instructions given to him remotely — a repeat of a false claim advanced by the president’s son and allies in 2016 against Clinton. Biden’s campaign denied the claim.

Then came the debate. Within moments, Trump began interrupting Biden, running through moderator Chris Wallace’s questions as well.

“Mr. President,” Wallace said at one point. “Your campaign agreed both sides get two-minute answers. Uninterrupted. Your side agreed. Observe what your campaign agreed to.”

An increasingly frustrated Wallace kept interrupting the president, imploring him to let Biden finish. Suddenly, the president had the clash he appeared to be spoiling for: a fight with the establishment media.

“I guess I'm debating you, not him,” Trump said. “But that's OK. I'm not surprised.”

Trump’s longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone quipped that “Trump very clearly defeated Chris Wallace in the debate with Biden coming in a distant third .... This is the perfect example of why you don’t accept the authority of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is neither a commission, nor appointed by the president nor does it have anything to do with the debates.”

The Biden campaign has pledged to accept “whatever set of rules” the commission comes up with. The next presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 15.

Whether his attacks on Biden, Wallace and the commission were successful is an open question. Some veteran Republican strategists and even some of Trump’s own advisers grimaced at his performance, fearing it turned off undecided and swing voters, especially women, who are siding with Biden in droves.

“He’s his own political strategist. It’s like an alternate universe. But the fact is, he’s in the Oval Office and so it’s impossible to argue with him,” one Trump adviser said privately. “If we didn’t have a lot of support from women heading into the debate, we sure as hell didn’t walk out with more.”

But Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of Trump’s top TV surrogates, said doubters don’t understand the president or his base.

“The president was dominant. His voters know that Washington needs to be interrupted,” Gaetz said. “A lot of MAGA voters resent the elitism that Chris Wallace personifies.”

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Trump’s Proud Boy moment sparks Black outrage in Florida

TALLAHASSEE — President Donald Trump’s shoutout to the far-fight hate group Proud Boys is energizing black voters to turn out against him in the must-win state of Florida.

“His call to the white supremacist group Proud Boys to ‘stand by,’ and telling his followers to go to the polls and watch them, that is straight up voter suppression,” said incoming state Minority Leader Bobby DuBose, a Black Broward County Democrat.

DuBose made his comments during a conference call to roll out Democrat Joe Biden’s “Black men, VOTE!” campaign, a push to secure what has been an important but inconsistent Florida voting bloc.

The Biden call was scheduled before Trump stood on the debate stage in Cleveland and ordered the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” creating a sense of urgency and outrage that could work in Biden’s favor.

“He had an opportunity to sort of dim the views of the underbelly of the country,” said former Florida Rep. Alan Williams, a strategic adviser to Biden’s campaign and former head of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus. “I was watching with my son last night and my daughter was with us on Facetime. That was hard.”

Florida’s Black vote has been consequential in recent election cycles, delivering an outsized impact on outcomes in a battleground where every vote matters. Trump’s remark on Tuesday could motivate Black voters, which overwhelmingly support Democrats, in a state he almost certainly has to take to win reelection.

The Proud Boy moment was one of few that broke through the chaotic 90-minute debate, during which Trump seized the stage, ignored the ground rules and interrupted both Biden and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. Almost immediately, the debate was labeled “a national embarrassment.”

“This summer we had a sort of American spring, if you will,” said Williams, referring to mass protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. “It was a clarion call that the president needs to be the leader for everyone, and last night Trump showed us he was not up to that task.”

Trump on Wednesday tried to walk back his comments, telling reporters that he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were despite mentioning them by name.

“I don’t know who Proud Boys are,” he told reporters in Washington. “But whoever they are they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work.”

Paris Dennard, the Republican National Committee’s adviser for Black media affairs, said the president has denounced hate groups, including the Proud Boys. Trump has called for antifa and the KKK “to be labeled terrorist organizations,” she said.

The Proud Boys are no strangers to Florida politics. During the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary, the group disrupted an Orlando forum featuring Ron DeSantis and Adam Putnam. Members of the group handed out anti-DeSantis literature and picked shouting matches with DeSantis supporters as the event came to an end.

The group opposed to DeSantis in the primary that year, but have since shown up at events in support of the first-term governor.

If Trump’s comments weren’t a racist call to arms, as most viewed it, that message was lost on the Proud Boys themselves. The group quickly unveiled a new logo with the words “stand back and stand by,” and private message boards were full of self-described Proud Boy members embracing Trump’s acknowledgment of the group on the nation’s biggest political stage.

“I can tell you this was not a dog whistle,” said Maya Brown, a Tampa-based Democratic organizer working to turn out Black and Hispanic voters. “To not only fail to condemn, but actually directly ignite a group like the proud Boys was shocking to me. It was hard for me to watch.”

But Black voters really flexed their muscle in the 2018 Democratic primary, making up nearly 30 percent of the turnout and helping Andrew Gillum, the Black former mayor of Tallahassee, win an upset primary race against former Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham.

“If you’re looking for an example of where Black voters make a difference in Florida, there might not be a better example than Andrew Gillum,” Brown said. “Everyone counted him out, but he mobilized progressive and black voters and that got him through the Democratic primary.”

As a candidate, Biden wants to give $15,000 in federal down-payment assistance for first-time Black homebuyers, invest $70 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, offer student loan forgiveness and protect the Affordable Care Act.

Trump’s plan for Black communities, which he has dubbed the “Platinum Plan” includes expanded tax credits for minority-owned businesses, increased lending to black-owned small businesses and more federal contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses.

In most Florida public polling, Biden has maintained a strong lead. The former vice president was up 86 to 11 with Black voters in an ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this month, consistent with turnout in the past two election cycles.

As the Biden campaign turns its focus to turnout, it wants to recreate the momentum that lifted Obama to the White House.

“Go back in history in 2008 and 2012, Black men voted in historical numbers for President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden,” Clifton Addison, who is helping lead Biden’s Florida Black turnout effort, said on the conference call. “The Biden campaign hopes to recreate that energy in November.”

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National Intelligence chief gave little notice for briefing on Russian assessment

The nation’s top intelligence official raced to arrange a briefing for senators on Tuesday night, according to three congressional sources, after declassifying what he acknowledged was an unverified Russian intelligence assessment.

The hastily assembled briefing, led by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, caught staffers off-guard and exacerbated concerns about what Democrats said was the deployment of Russian disinformation to support President Donald Trump’s effort to discredit the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s contacts with the Russian government.

The episode also revived allegations from Democrats that Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman and a longtime ally of the president, is abusing his position to aid Trump politically by selectively declassifying documents intended to denigrate Trump’s political opponents. Much of that information has been revealed through Republican senators who are conducting investigations targeting those opponents.

According to an email obtained by POLITICO, a Ratcliffe aide reached out to several Capitol Hill staffers at 6:36 p.m. Tuesday, four hours after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) released the newly declassified Russian intelligence.

The aide invited congressional leadership aides and staff from three committees — the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence committees — to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s secure workspace for a 7:15 p.m. briefing, just 39 minutes later. The invitation sent staffers, many of whom are working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic, scrambling to get to the Capitol in time.

“Sorry in advance for the short notice, but if Members in receipt of this letter are available, the DNI will likely be heading down to brief Chairman Graham, Chairman Rubio and other Members who can attend,” read the email from Ratcliffe’s legislative affairs chief, Rob Cooper.

The timing and rushed nature of the briefing — a sharp departure from typical briefings arranged by ODNI — led some Democrats to suggest it appeared designed to offer Graham and only a limited audience of lawmakers and aides the details about a significant national security matter, while blocking others’ access and creating logistical challenges they knew couldn’t be overcome.

Graham on Wednesday denied that he had been “privately briefed.”

At the conclusion of the email from ODNI, Cooper added, “Knowing that this is very short notice and many may not be able to attend, we would be happy to set up another session that other interested Members can also attend.“

The House Intelligence Committee has requested a separate briefing, according to a congressional aide.

The invitation described the briefing as being intended primarily for Graham and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, even though Rubio was unavailable to attend.

Ratcliffe’s office later prevented some of those committee and leadership staffers from participating in the briefing, with the exception of those who work for the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to sources familiar with the matter. The sources said officials with Ratcliffe’s office claimed they could not verify whether the staffers were cleared to receive the specifics on the Russian intelligence.

Just hours earlier, Graham had released a letter from Ratcliffe revealing a Russian intelligence assessment stating that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, personally approved a campaign strategy to pin Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee on Trump and his campaign.

Ratcliffe noted that the U.S. intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication” — leading Democrats and, privately, some Republicans to question why Ratcliffe and Graham released it in the first place. POLITICO reported Tuesday that the Senate Intelligence Committee quickly rejected the Russian assessment as part of its three-year investigation into the Kremlin’s 2016 interference campaign.

On Wednesday, Graham defended his decision to release the information despite concerns about its veracity, maintaining that it was important to ask former FBI Director James Comey, who testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier Wednesday, whether federal officials pursued allegations against Clinton “with the same vigor” as they investigated claims about Trump’s ties to Russia.

Graham has been spearheading an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe — an inquiry that Trump has openly encouraged and that Democrats have derided as a politically motivated effort.

“I am really concerned that we are treating this Ratcliffe letter as something at all serious or credible. And, Mr. Chairman, I hope very much that nobody from this committee had any hand in generating this letter,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said during Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, referencing Ratcliffe’s letter.

“This rings just innumerable bells about the dangers of selective declassification.”

Trump referenced the disclosure in his first debate with Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, on Tuesday night. It was among several allegations pushed by Senate Republicans in recent weeks that Trump used to bludgeon his opponent.

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Biden transition elevates former Facebook exec as ethics arbiter

Joe Biden’s transition team named Jessica Hertz, until recently a Facebook executive focused on government regulations, as its general counsel on Wednesday and charged her with navigating conflicts of interest and other ethical issues for the Biden administration-in-waiting — a move that drew immediate fire from the left.

“The ultimate arbiter for ethics for the Biden transition was a senior regulatory official for Facebook up until a few months ago, at a time when progressives and the Biden campaign are fighting against the right-wing agenda of Facebook,” said Jeff Hauser, the director of the liberal Revolving Door Project, which focuses on executive branch personnel and transitions. “Please make it clear that I think the Trump administration is insanely corrupt and I’m not equating the two, but this is deeply disappointing.”

Hertz will oversee a team responsible for “enforcement, oversight, and compliance” of the ethics plan that Biden's team also released Wednesday. In it, they promise to reestablish many of the rules President Barack Obama instituted to limit the role of former lobbyists in the 2008 transition — which Biden was also involved in.

“Biden-Harris ethics rules should go as far or further than the Obama-Biden administration in banning corporate lobbyists, officers, or agents with conflicting loyalties from serving in the next Administration,” said Caitlin Lang, a spokesperson from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is closely aligned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “These ethics rules unfortunately are not as strong as the Obama administration's and do not come close to rebuilding trust in government or meeting this moment."

The early clash is likely a preview of the coming fight between the left and the center over administration personnel should Biden win in November. The outrage over Hertz's Facebook ties is also yet another sign of how controversial the social media company has become among liberals since President Donald Trump's surprise 2016 victory.

Tensions between the Biden campaign and Facebook continue to escalate during the final stretch of the campaign. “Millions of people are voting. Meanwhile, your platform is the nation’s foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week. “Rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression.”

Biden, himself, told The New York Times editorial board last year that, “I’ve never been a fan of Facebook, as you probably know. I’ve never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he’s a real problem.”

During just over two years at Facebook, Hertz served as a director and associate general counsel, where she handled “a wide range of government inquiries and regulatory investigations,” according to her biography for Columbia Law School, where she has been a lecturer. Before that, she was principal deputy counsel to Biden during his vice presidency and counsel to Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

If Biden wins in November, his transition team has told Democrats that they expect it to grow to at least 350 people by Inauguration Day. That team is tasked with helping vet and select the more than 4,000 political appointees that a new administration must hire.

Biden's transition is the first that has been required to publicly release their ethics plan by Oct. 1, under a new law passed earlier this year.

Among other things, Biden's rules bar those who’ve worked as registered lobbyists or foreign agents in the past year from working on the transition unless Hertz signs off. They also forbid transition staffers from working on any “specific Transition matter” that they’ve lobbied on in the past year or plan to lobby on in the coming year without Hertz’s approval.

Biden's transition team has already made a few exceptions to the rules.

"We have granted a handful of authorizations, including for individuals with expertise in pandemic response who recently advocated on behalf of their public interest, non-profit employers," a transition official said.

The transition team did not answer questions about how the review process works and whether they will disclose the staffers who receive exceptions. "The assumption is we should all just defer to the ethics of somebody’s who’s been defending Facebook recently," said Hauser.

Obama’s rules required the transition’s executive director to sign off on hiring of anyone who had worked as a lobbyist in the past year. In 2008, Obama tasked an aide from his Senate office, Chris Lu, to make such decisions, rather than someone from the business community.

Trump, in contrast, initially allowed registered lobbyists to serve on his transition team; Vice President Mike Pence forced them to deregister or leave the transition when he took over the transition after Trump’s upset victory.

Progressives, however, had hoped Biden would broaden restrictions on lobbyists to apply to those who work in Washington’s influence industry but aren’t registered to lobby, making it harder for them to serve on the transition or in a Biden administration.

Some of those people are currently heading up policy working groups the Biden campaign has charged with coming up with ideas for a future administration. They include Mignon Clyburn, who worked as a paid consultant to T-Mobile last year as it pursued a merger with Sprint and is now a co-chair of Biden’s innovation policy working group; and Chris Jennings, a consultant who’s advised companies such as CVS Health and General Motors and is now a co-chair of Biden’s health care policy working group, according to people familiar with the groups.

The ethics plan has been a highly anticipated read inside the Beltway, particularly among progressive activists trying to push a potential Biden administration to the left, as well as the small army of D.C. lobbyists and consultants hoping for a government job should Biden win. People with ties to industry and veterans of past Democratic administrations have argued that an overly strict ethics policy could force Biden to pass over the most qualified people for jobs during a moment of dueling economic and public health crises.

Biden’s rules do include a provision that might irritate K Street: They prohibit transition staffers from promoting “their work for the Transition during their service and for 12 months thereafter in any business or professional marketing materials.” Transition staffers who become lobbyists often talk up their work for the president-elect in their biographies as a way to help drum up businesses. Neither Obama’s nor Trump’s transition teams instituted such a rule.

But some progressives were skeptical the rule had real teeth. Said Hauser: "They can’t market it, themselves, but come on, their work on the transition is going to be known by a potential client."

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