Is it fair to blame Wallace for not controlling Trump?

He should have summoned the LBJ security team! ;-)

I would turn off each contenders mike when they can’t be silent.

I don’t think it would be ethical to use a electric fencer on Trump. Practical, maybe, but not ethical.

@kritiper What is an electric fencer?

Maybe a time out or lost from overall time to speak?

90 minutes without a pee break would be rough.

It’s easy really. Do the next debate on Zoom and only unmute the microphone of whoever’s turn it is to talk. Give time limits, then back on mute.

The moderators always get the blame for the participants not adhering to the rules or getting out of control. Right or wrong, it happens.

No.

I think they should do much fewer topics at each debate and give the candidates more time.

I wish there was some sort of rule against attacks and the candidates just lay out what they plan to do. They wouldn’t follow the rule anyway I guess.

Giving them more time would have just given trump more time to scream. It wouldn’t have helped a single thing.

No, nobody pays attention to moderators at any debate I’ve watched.
I thought it was kind of funny that Wallace gave Trump hell.

Nothing about this is funny, not unless you think the increasingly real prospect of civil war in the U.S. is funny.

Wallace does not have the power to silence the president of the U.S. He was not given any tools but his own voice. He was a lad waving a red flag, and Trump was a runaway locomotive.

This was a one-time spectacle, a spectacle of horror that was taken seriously around the world, and probably least of all right here, where we simply don’t recognize the danger we’re in because nothing of the kind has ever happened to us before.

Nothing about it was funny. It was a horrifying embarassment.

@RedDeerGuy1 A electric fencer, some of the older ones were nick-named “weed burners” or some thing like that, were/are electric devices farmers and ranchers use to electrify fences to keep cattle and other animals from knocking the fence down. The ones I always got shocked by would pulse and not stay on constantly. I think they were the “weed burners” because when you touched one, you got one heck of a wake-up call!
They were called “weed burners” because if a blade of grass touched the wire the electricity being discharged would burn the blade off.

@kritiper
So a cattle prod?
Or more modern tasser?

Microphone control. Definitely, the best bet.

If the Oscars can turn up the music and have the onstage elbow holders lead people offstage while they are thanking their friends and family, surely they can do something similar when a candidate starts throwing his support to white supremacists, and won’t shut up.

When someone goes over their time, they could be penalized time later, and/or twice the time they went over be added to their opponents’ time.

Put them in two separate glass rooms on stage and their mics can only come on for 2 minutes and automatically shuts off when it’s the other persons turn. This way Trump can try to interrupt and yell but at the most people will only hear a muffled sound and lock the door so he can’t step out to yell. But to answer your question, it wasn’t fair to blame Wallace. I don’t see what he could do to help the situation.

No. It must be excruciating for the man to walk around knowing he will be associated with the memory of anything so deplorably tasteless. It turned out to be a show highlighting celebrity deformity. And it was a blockbuster show stopper in the slandering of the image of this country. I wonder if Wallace can ever be tricked into trying it again? Do you think he volunteered?

@Inspired_2write A cattle prod is a hand held battery operated device and not practical in the situation I described because the moderator would have to get up, CONSTANTLY, and run over and zap the president. An electric fencer, which plugs into a 110v. outlet, would be wired directly to his podium so the moderator would only have to push a button.
A “tasser” would be impractical because just one doesn’t hold enough of a charge to CONSTANTLY zap the prez. The moderator would need a whole truck load of “tassers.”

I second Pandora. Even if they shut off his mic while they’re on stage, the screaming banshee doesn’t know it, and will continue to scream. They need separate, sound proof booths.