Americans finally get an orderly Trump-Biden debate, thanks to the mute button

With 11 days to go until election day, US President Donald Trump, seeking a fresh term, and his challenger Democratic nominee Joe Biden faced off for the final time in a presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee. And America finally got an orderly debate.

The debate, moderated by NBC News’ Kristen Welker, was in sharp contrast to the first one in September that had plunged into chaos from the word go with both candidates and the moderator seen yelling over each other. The debate was peppered with words such as, ‘let him finish,’ ‘will you shut up’, ‘You don’t know anything’, ‘you are lying’.

In contrast, one heard words such as   ‘May I’, ‘Excuse me’, ‘please… can I add to that.’ Many believe this was the result of the mute button control that the organisers had introduced to maintain order.  “They knew they would be muted out and won’t be able to put across their views,” a viewer said.

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Lessons were learnt from the first debate and the non-partisan commission that oversees the debates thought of a new measure to help moderators “maintain order” – muted microphones.

Even Trump, seen indulging in frequent interruptions and ‘cross-talking’ in the first debate, couldn’t help but appreciate the conduct of the debate.  “I respect very much the way you are handling this,” he told the moderator.

In fact, Welker earned a lot of praise for her conduct of the session with many users on Twitter saying that she was the ‘real winner’.

But, it  doesn’t mean that there were no interruptions. According to nbcnews.com, Trump made 24 interruptions to Biden’s 25 and attacked 123 times as compared to 89 of the former vice-president.