Moderators Announced For Elections 2016 Debate Schedule, Hillary Clinton Plans Crushing Debate Prep

Save the dates! The moderators for the Elections 2016 debate schedule have been announced, reports Fox 59. Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News will host the first debate, which is scheduled for September 26. There will also be a vice presidential Elections 2016 debate hosted by Elaine Quijano of CBS News in Farmville, Virginia, on October 4 at Longwood University.

Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News will co-host a town hall-style debate on October 9. The host of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace, will host the final debate out of Las Vegas University of Nevada on October 19. Steve Scully, the political editor for C-Span, will be a backup moderator for all debates.

The moderators were announced by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates via a press release on debate moderators and Elections 2016 debate schedule on the morning of September 2, as were the debate formats. Each debate is scheduled from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and will run without a commercial break.

NEW: @LesterHoltNBC to moderate the 1st presidential debate Sept. 26, Commission on Presidential Debates announces. pic.twitter.com/Cx1doOaoQB

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) September 2, 2016

The debate moderators were originally scheduled to be announced in August but were met with delays due to the challenge in selecting moderators that would be “immune to accusations of bias,” reports Fox 59, adding that “Trump made it more challenging than ever.”

Presidential nominee Donald Trump has become known for his aggressive repudiation of the media and has stripped the media credentials of many reputable journalists and outlets during the course of his campaign. As Trump has been known to attack anyone who disagrees with him or says something he does not like, the Commission on Presidential Debates has spent extensive time researching moderators who could be as “immune as possible” to such attacks.

Topics will be decided upon in advance and reported one week prior to the debates. Topics will be based on matters both foreign and domestic.

Immigration is likely to be a hot topic during Elections 2016 debates, with Mr. Trump’s recent immigration policy having recently experienced a bit of backtracking. Hillary Clinton has already begun hinting at her immigration policy in advance of the debates, and she recently posted a photo on Instagram of how her immigration policy differs from her opponents.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has also prepared the format for each debate. The first and the third will be divided into six blocks of time, with each being 15 minutes in length. The third town hall-style debate will be divided into two blocks of time, where half of the time will be spent on questions posed by citizens attending the debate and the other half of the questions will be formulated based on public interest found on social media, reports Fox 59.

Attendance of the town hall meeting will be determined by the Gallup Organization and will consist of voters who fall into the undecided category. The vice presidential debate will be 10-minute segments, with nine segments in total.

Hillary Clinton is currently ahead in the national polls by three points, reports the New York Times poll tracker. She leads with a four-point average in the key swing states Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, according to the New York Times.

Real Clear Politics has reported that Donald Trump will need to win every single one of those states to win the election, although those numbers may change after the debates. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Hillary Clinton is preparing for a “landslide” victory come November due to numbers just like that.

But that’s not stopping Hillary Clinton from preparing strenuously for this debate, and she has engaged in vigorous debate prep to crush her opponent from a psychoanalytical perspective, according to the New York Times. The outlet reported yesterday that she spent the better part of Friday afternoon in debate prep.

The Hillary Clinton camp has been talking to Tony Schwartz, the writer of Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, in an effort to discover Trump’s weaknesses and “insecurities. Hillary Clinton has not kept it secret that she believes her opponents temperament is his biggest stumbling block in his path to the Oval Office.

Her debate prep strategy, as outlined by the New York Times, appears to be capitalizing on his temperament issues and using them to her advantage come debate time. The author of Trump’s The Art of the Deal recently said that if he were asked by Trump to write the book today, the content “would be a very different book” and that he would title it The Sociopath, reports the New Yorker.

http://twitter.com/Mon_Blogs_Life/status/768309736500371456

Hillary Clinton has also reportedly enlisted the aid of psychological forensic experts who are undergoing a forensic analysis of Trump’s personality profile. She is trying to figure out how he might respond to certain answers with a woman as his main opponent on stage.

She’s hoping to discover his weaknesses so that she can pull out some of those temperament issues on a national stage in an effort to advertise to the country that he is “less than presidential,” reports the New York Times. The Donald Trump debate prep seems to be just the opposite. He has reportedly publicly claimed that he won’t prepare much at all.

“I believe you can prep too much for those things. It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phoney – like you’re trying to be someone you’re not.”

The New York Times says that Donald Trump has been resistant with his advisers on debate prep. The Times also reports that when debate prep was launched with Mr. Trump, “little had been accomplished.” He says he knows “how to handle Hillary” and doesn’t see the need.

Hillary Clinton isn’t just looking at Trump’s weaknesses going into the debates. She will have many answers ready for the American people regarding the private email server issue, as well as answers prepared regarding the Clinton Foundation. She is also preparing for personal attacks from Mr. Trump regarding her husband and his extra-marital affairs.

Donald Trump, however, has gone on the record to say he hasn’t planned any personal attacks. He has also said that “you have to see what happens” if Hillary swings first. It almost sounds like it is this temperament that Hillary Clinton is hoping to draw out, and she has been posting a lot of Instagram message and tweets about the very topic to drop some hints to her voter base.

http://www.instagram.com/p/BJ3wrmxhuIt/?taken-by=hillaryclinton

About the debate preparation, most experts are saying that not prepping for three political debates could cost Donald Trump the presidency. Salon Magazine predicts Hillary Clinton will be the winner of the debates and will come off as the cool and collected one. Salon notes that she has withstood 11 hours testifying to Congress and has reported Trump’s debate prep strategy as the “nail in his coffin” and even said, “the less Trump prepares for the upcoming debates, the better off the world will be.”

Watch Hillary Clinton talk Elections 2016 debate prep strategy here with Jimmy Kimmel and how she thinks certain things Donald Trump says are “aiding and abetting” terrorists abroad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmWmzQ4Qqp8

Anything can change between now and then, and Donald Trump may well change his strategy after the first debate, when the first round of polls trickle in. Will you be watching the debates?

[Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP Images]