MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski said Wednesday that President Donald Trump “firebombed” the first of three scheduled presidential debates and said, “If I were Team Biden, I would not do another debate after this debacle.”
Brzezinski responded to the previous evening’s debate — moderated by “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace — by saying that if she were part of “Team Biden,” she’d likely advise against doing any more debates. (RELATED: Election 2020: First Presidential Debate Live Blog)
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Speaking to former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, Brzezinski said, “But if Bob Woodward thinks, Robert Gibbs, that the ‘presidency is being assassinated,’ the debate last night was firebombed by Donald Trump.”
Brzezinski went on to say that Wallace should have taken steps to rein Trump in and chose not to do so.
“There were many options that the moderator could have taken. He could have stopped the debate. He could have made the men walk off stage and come back,” she explained. “He could have asked audio — he could have turned around and said, ‘I’d like to know who’s running audio. I need you to turn off Donald Trump’s mic, because I would like to hear Joe Biden speak for two minutes uninterrupted.'”
Brzezinski concluded that, if she were in charge of the Biden campaign, she would not approve a second debate after what happened during the first.
“What are the issues at stake for the debate commission, if there’s going to be a second debate?” She asked Gibbs. “Because if I were Team Biden, I would not do another debate after this debacle.”
“Well, Mika, I think you hit the nail on the head,” Gibbs agreed. “I think we need to hear this morning from the Presidential Commission on Debates as to what they’re going to do to get this format and to get this debate process back on track.”
Gibbs went on to suggest that the moderator — or the control room — should potentially have control over the candidates’ microphones so that future debates could be kept under tighter control.
“I think the debate commission can’t stand — and quite frankly, the American people can’t tolerate two more episodes of what we saw last night,” Gibbs concluded. “We did not see a debate. We saw an embarrassment for American democracy.”