CNN and ABC News have announced plans for presidential debates, with moderators yet to be announced. 95.5 WSB host Eric Von Haessler wonders why the position is even needed.
As reports surface that CNN will tab Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, while ABC News is considering using David Muir and Linsey Davis, Von Haessler said the mere idea of a moderate feels like a foreign concept.
“First of all, they’ll be terrible. I would rather have nobody. They’re all prima donnas. Prima donnas,” Von Haessler reiterated. “And it just turns out that anybody that you pick out of 24-hour news buildings, just full of prima donnas. Why do we need two moderators? That’s number one. And then number two, why do we need any moderators? I don’t think that Lincoln/Douglas, I don’t think they had a moderator there. There used to be a way of debating that each side knew how to do this. Or just have like, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart, Bert Kreischer, I don’t care.
“The moderator does not need to be a part of the debate and they always are. And it’s insane. I think that there’s got to be some way that there’s somebody there who just sort of kicks it off just randomly. “But whoever moderates the debate should have gotten the short straw.”
Eric Von Haessler continued by joking that the job would be a perfect use of AI technology while adding that the likelihood that each moderator shows up to the debate with a mindset that the evening isn’t about them is incredibly low.
“We need someone who doesn’t have an agent. How about that? No one is allowed to moderate a presidential or vice presidential debate if they have an agent.”
