How Kristen Welker Won the Second Presidential Debate

The overall mood of the final presidential debate was one of relative restraint. The final diss track mix-tapes from Donald Trump and Joe Biden featured mostly recycled beats: Hunter Biden, Putin, fracking, and most of all, the sputtering and confused response to Coronavirus. Despite the presence of Kid Rock in the audience, the vibe was low-key, almost somnolent on occasions.

Since this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, there were obviously attempted topic hijackings and violent digressions. But really, it was relatively tame—and thus the clear winner, by unanimous decision, was moderator Kristen Welker, who gamely shepherded a reasonable facsimile of a presidential debate and managed to stop Trump from interrupting constantly, as he had in the first contest.  

Biden ominously hinted at our upcoming “dark winter” and talked about how ordinary people (he dipped into kitchen table metaphors aplenty) are dying while Trump Tweets as Rome burns. Trump’s attempted haymakers probably made more sense to committed Fox News viewers. Trump insinuated Joe Biden has a “thing” about hiding in his basement, which was kind of funny. Biden was again forced to reckon with the legacy of the 1994 Crime Bill. And when the topic of racial tension in America came on the docket, the ever-sensitive Trump assured us that he had done more for the African-American community than any President ever, with the possible exception of, yes, Abraham Lincoln.

So, yes, the content was similar to the first debate, except Kristen Welker handled the dire task of keeping it all moving with self-assured aplomb. How the hell did she do it? How did Welker avoid another untamed, vaguely feral affair? There are a few simple reasons.

The Microphone Placebo Effect

The first Presidential debate was such an unmitigated disaster that the Commission on Presidential Debates actually had to take concrete steps to ensure the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military and Leader of the Free World would shut his damn mouth every so often. They settled on a fairly anodyne solution: Each candidate was allowed an uninterrupted two-minute period to answer questions at the start of each segment. After this, mics would be turned on for both candidates, potentially opening the door for wild rebuttals and melodramatic interjections.

Unfortunately for Twitter hopes, this was never going to be a matter of muting someone (you know who!) in mid-insane sentence. Nevertheless! Something about the knowledge that rules were put in place specifically to curtail the excesses of the last debate, or the anticipation of potential muting, however limited, may have generated a more pliant atmosphere.

The Reverse Interruption

Chris Wallace was thrown around like a rag doll by Trump in the first debate. Biden also took advantage of the loose structure: Halfway through the debate, he was literally pleading for a little goddamn respect. Welker had a different strategy to Wallace’s whining about being allowed to do his job: She wasn’t afraid of the reverse interruption, which is a fancy way of saying she wasn’t afraid to tell the candidates to shut it down and move on.

In this typical moment, Trump is spending altogether too much time both denouncing Biden as a tool of Wall Street while simultaneously bragging about how much money he could get from financiers if he wasn’t too ethical to do so. Wallace might have allowed this to go on indefinitely, but Welker just very firmly told them they were moving on. And Trump moved on. 

Here, as Trump is again trying to make the case for the “Biden Crime Family,” Welker attempts to pivot to China. Trump is on his hind legs, and has a bit of crowing momentum, the sort that gives him strength, and he’s clearly not ready to relinquish the moment. There is some crosstalk. Trump talks over Welker a little, until she forcefully yet calmly asks him (luckily talking about himself is his favorite subject!) what specifically he’s going to do to “make China pay” (another favorite topic of his!)

A moderator’s job is to moderate, which occasionally makes one duty bound to drag the candidates back to reality, or in this case, at least to the next topic. Chris Wallace didn’t seem to understand this, but Welker had trained for it.

Tired Trump

Welker got an assist from Trump himself: The President of the United States was noticeably subdued, or, more accurately, was acting less like an escaped zoo animal with a vendetta against humanity. Perhaps his advisers had finally broken through to him about the possible ramifications of waltzing into a Presidential debate with big “I’ll Tell You When I’ve Had Enough!” energy; perhaps he just saw his poll numbers.

Or perhaps Trump is tired. He did recently spend three days hospitalized at Walter Reed for the coronavirus, after all. Thankfully, the President emerged from this sabbatical just as weird and inappropriate as ever, perhaps fuelled by a battery of medications. And perhaps they’re wearing off, because last night’s Trump was remarkably low-energy.

Welker was the chief beneficiary of this (along with you know, America, the world, etc). She often allowed for “reasonable” amounts of his counter blustering, but nonetheless forcefully diverted the conversation forward time and time again. But in sports, you play the opponent on the schedule, injuries and all, and Welker did that. She did it so well and professionally that even Trump praised her, which is truly something.

We Need to Move On

Welker was actually quite free and loose about allowing candidates their extra ten or thirty seconds for rebuttals. It was a debate, after all! Still, what was striking, especially since this outing was somewhat hyped as a maximum security event to curtail the previous shitshow, was that the vibe she engendered never felt oppressive or claustrophobic. It didn’t give the candidates (again, you know which one in particular!) any reason to become overtly hostile to either her or the process itself. Despite some surprisingly fairly difficult questions posed, tempers on all sides remained at least somewhat steady.

At one point, Welker allowed Biden additional 30 seconds, in which he dropped some bars: “He says we’re learning to live with it. We’re learning to die with it!” This led to one of the most quotable moments of the debate, in which Donald Trump took full responsibility for Coronavirus, saying, “I take full responsibility” immediately followed a second later by “It’s not my fault.” 

Scrawling through the transcript will alert you to the sheer amount of times Welker put her foot down and refused to let anyone die on any particular rhetorical hill beyond the limits of good taste. Through very simple yet effective adjustments, she made sure we got to hear as much as possible. Little victories such as these are important when you know, the world may be in peril. We thank her for her service, and let all other moderators be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Originally Appeared on GQ