By Maria Ortiz
Jun 20, 2024, 18:54 PM EDT
President Joe Biden’s team won a drawing held to organize the debate of the presidential candidates in the 2024 elections to be held by CNN next week and chose to secure a podium position on the right side of the stagebut in doing so gave Donald Trump the option to make the final statement of the confrontation.
After the flip of a coin, Joe Biden’s campaign won the right to choose the podium position in the debate or the order of the final statements, and opted for the first option, while the podium of his Republican rival, Donald Trump will be on the left side.
The Trump campaign retained the second option of the drawing, which gives the former president the opportunity to make the final statement of the debate, so Biden will be the first to finish his speech.
The debate, which will be broadcast on June 27 on CNN, It will be the first of two televised debates between Biden and Trump before the November 5 elections.
The debate will be held in Atlanta, will last 90 minutes and will be moderated by CNN journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
There will be two commercial breaks during which campaign staff will not be able to interact with their candidate.
The Biden and Trump teams have also accepted that microphones are closed throughout the debateexcept for the candidate whose turn it is to speak.
Contestants will also not be allowed to use accessories or pre-written notes, although they will receive a pen, a notebook and a bottle of water.
Biden will spend the next few days at the Camp David presidential residence in Maryland, outside Washington, to prepare for the debate.
For his part, Trump has been preparing for a few weeks in meetings with some senators and other politicians who sound like possible candidates for the Republican Vice President.
This will be the first time that a current president and a former president face each other in an electoral debate.
It is also not usual for the debate to be held in June, before the national conventions of both parties where the candidacies are made official, but this year’s primaries decided who the candidates of each party will be during the spring.
Biden and Trump will be the only candidates on stage after the qualifying window closes at midnight, CNN reported.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent, failed to meet CNN’s poll and ballot access requirements and called his exclusion from the stage “undemocratic, un-American and cowardly.”
ABC will host the second and final presidential debate in September. Televised presidential debates have been part of American tradition in every election cycle since 1976.
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