Twitter Lights Up Over Trump's Debate Mic Being Cut
No real spoiler alert, here. The 2020 presidential debate mic mute was all but inevitable. Trump himself, undoubtedly, knew it was going to happen when he went on Fox & Friends and pushed back against the new regulation which stipulated that each candidates' mic would be muted to permit his opponent to answer, uninterrupted to debate moderator, Kristin Welker's questions. "The whole thing is crazy. It's so set up. It's incredible. We've been winning for so long," Trump said (via U.S. News). President Trump is, in fact, losing to former Vice President Biden in polls at the time of this writing, with a significant 9 to 10 percentage point lead (via Voice of America).
The only real surprise was how long it took for someone to push the mute button on Trump's mic. Almost an hour. The moment has since been immortalized by the gods of social media (via Twitter). The sitting president of the United States was busy claiming, "We have done an incredible job on health care, and we're going to do even better at..." And then he went silent.
The Twitterverse reacts to Trump's silencing
There was a moment of Twitterverse silence before the feeding frenzy. "Was that a mic cut?! Was that the first time Trump has ever been shut up?!," wrote one debate watcher. "Ooooh the first mute!," celebrated CNN journalist, Amir Vera. And then came the stills of Trump's face when he realized that national TV was no longer listening to him, courtesy of Huff Post editor Philip Lewis. These were followed by the "thank Gods," the "about times," and the ultimate form of Twitter celebration, the memes, all the memes. To Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor of Teen Vogue, who tweeted half way through the debate, "I just want to see how the mic mute works" — are you satisfied?
Not everybody is. Instead of celebrating this single, historic moment, many debate watchers have taken to Twitter, frustrated that Trump's mic had not been muted more. "CNN advertising (yet not utilizing) a 'mute mic function is the biggest waste of power since Trump being in sworn in office," complained one frustrated voter. "Apparently Donald Trump gets extra time to get the last word in on every single question," vented another.