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Daily Show my gost tonight. He is the co founder and co chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Please talking to the program, Frank Farnkoff, Let me first of all, welcome you to the show and explain very quickly the reason on the Commission for Presidential Debates kind of got blown out of the water. You guys would run the debates. The two candidates, Trump and Biden, the two main candidates, made their own agreement and kind of cut you guys out of the process. Is that correct?
Well, they're trying.
To I see. Why would they do that.
Because we're not nice people, I guess.
And they seemed so nice. But why what was the reasoning behind not having it in the way that it's been since eighty seven?
You know, it started in eighty seven for a reason. We were created after two studies, one at Harvard, one at the Georgetown not familiarly for the center, and because there was so many problems with the candidates on both sides over the years, we went sixteen years without any presidential debates because they wouldn't participate. No one can be forced to debate.
They thought it was troo partisan when it was the legal women.
Vite that's right, And so we were created. Paul Kirk was then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I was President Reagan's chairman of the RNC, and we created the Commission and have done them now for well, we've done thirty three over the last thirty six years. And we were created for one purpose, to be in the middle of the candidates, representing the people. Commission not non
part non part of IC. And so at this point in time, with this particular UH battle, there's a lot of things unexpected happening, and I don't know what the hell is going to happen. Is we go forward? Agreed, so we have to wait and see. Now they agreed, supposedly they've agreed, but now the question is.
You know, there's gonna be one debate on Sanna apparently, and then one other debate. I'm not exactly ABC.
UH. Now the questions that aren't been settled because I hear that the former president today said he won't appear unless a drug test is taken by Biden to show he wasn't hopped up like he allegedly was when he made his speech, you know, the State of the Union speech. I don't know.
I don't think that the prey they want Biden drug tested because they think he's trans what what? What do they think is out of it?
What?
What do they believe?
We believe? I guess that that he was hyped up there at when.
I say speech, and would Trump then also drug test?
I don't think so?
All right?
And the other thing is what's undecided, John, is how did they walk out on the stage or they see.
These things they decide where to sit?
Oh yeah, a lot of things.
Uh huh.
The mute button. I put a mute button in four years ago because they weren't obeying the rules that they weren't supposed to talk for two minutes when the others.
I put one of those in my TV and I used it as soon as they started. Let me ask you a question, and perhaps this may not what are we missing? Like? So let's say they don't go with the Presidential Commission, and they don't go with what are we really losing? I mean, to be perfectly frank, I don't get much substantive out of these debates anyway, the idea that their answers have to be a minute and a half and there's a buzzer, there's a meat.
So that's all been changed. We changed that some time ago. What happens is the debates ninety minutes or divided in the six fifteen minute pods that each answer a question from the moderator for two minutes without interruption, and then the moderator can drill down. It's no of these two minutes, one minute and all the rest like existed a long long time ago. Those are the things we changed, and so you know what they're going to do here. They haven't answered those questions.
But do you believe that those debates were fruitful? Like when I think of the debates between Trump and Hillary, or Trump and Biden or Trump, and let's say, Adore, I didn't necessarily, I didn't find much.
What we do, what we do after each cycle is we go out and ask the public did the debates have an effect with any good for you? In making this decision, and about sixty five to seventy percent say it's not the only and the most significant factor, But yes, it does play a part. And you know, we look
at it in two ways. John. Not only are they answering the questions about issues that are important to the people they want to hear, but you'll learn an awful lot about the personality, the attitude of a person, how they conduct themselves in the debates. For example, I think for former President Trump, really hurt himself in the first debate last time. I think al Gore back in nineteen or in two thousand walking across the stage in front of door, So they learned that.
Isn't that? I think that's kind of my point, which is, if what we take away from it is al Gore side and war rouge, so he shouldn't so he shouldn't be president. That strikes me as a methodology that is terribly flawed.
Well, you tie that with what the answers to the questions were also on.
It, but no one remembers those, and isn't because I think the point is you have this sort of system set up for tradition, but the media has changed so drastically. It's so polarized, it's so sensationalized. They're not looking to accomplish. What maybe the Commission even is looking to accomplish is that now at.
Odds, what we lose is this number one, We lose the town hall meeting in this situation where there are private citizens who are on the stage and get to ask the president, former president whatever questions. That's a real big part of this. Plus we go to campuses we've got. I mean, there are four schools right now, Texas State, Virginia State, Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, the University of Utah and Salt Lake. They're cramped, they're they're they're working up
right now to put on what they do. They teach civics, special civics courses. I mean, there's an awful lot that's done. Those schools really deserve a hand because they're whole.
They just.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm pretty sure those schools are supposed to be teaching civics. Whether there's a debate or not. I do think we should give them applause. Like you know, Mention in Utah is teaching physics and civics. Uh. I guess my worry
is we have this. Are we clinging to an institution that nobody is particularly satisfied with, whether they think the moderators are too part in, whether they think the rules are too archaic or too steeped in Robert's rules of order, and we're not working hard enough to design a system that will help our democracy flourish rather than just become sensationalistic.
Fact, I think that that is a criticism that's been there, But we have changed what we do now. Wasn't what happened when we how we did it back when it started, or how it was done before us. Just dividing in fact the ninety minutes in the six minutes.
Monitoring an audience seems to me a way of dispelling a little bit of the theatrical nature.
But you know that was both parties, both candidates. He said, Well, at our debates there were people are booing, and those are the primary debates. We have nothing to do with the primary debates. In our debates. You can go back and look at all thirty three of them. Very few times do you even hear that there's an audience. They may laugh if something funny you said. The ticket said you're not allowed to make a noise. If so, the Secret Service is going to come and r give up.
So they've been pretty good. They've been pretty good.
The Silver Service really drag people out for making noise. Yes, yes, I don't think you're making the case for democracy connecting. I think I think you're finding yourself in all.
Right, Well, John, we're not perfect understood.
I'm starting to get that sense. How does the the Commission regain its footing or is it out of the barn?
And that's the end you say this, as I said, we were. We were started so that we could provide the middle down the middle for the public. If these two candidates.
Clowns, no, well you know I started with that and switched.
But if they're successful, if they do this and it works out, and so that people sitting at home and watching on television have have learned something, we'll salute them. We'll salute them now. Whether that doesn't mean we're not ever going to come back. But if they crash, which they may still, because a lot of things have to be figure, we're going to be there. We're going to be there until we know for sure.
What be there to pick up the pieces. This is one of the situations where you say to the debate, people will be there when you fall, and I.
Remember that, yes, you will fall.
All right, frank fur cop, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna take this for a break.
So Vice President Kamala Harris has been out on the campaign trail, which is very refreshing. For a long time, it felt like the White House was hiding her, possibly because whenever she speaks, it's mostly an unintelligible word salad. But it turns out that's all on purpose.
Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time. It seems like maybe it's a small issue.
It's a big issue. You need to get to go and need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work and get home. And it is time for us to do what we have been doing in that time is every day.
Every day.
It is time for us to agree that.
She's come so far since our first session. My name is Dahlia Rose Hibiscus and I am Vice President Kamala Harris's holistic thought advisor. What is a holistic thought advisor. It's holistic, yes, and I am advising. And what do we mean when we say that? It means that I am the one by whom the thoughts are being advised from a place of advisement and then, once advised, communicated holistically. What mm hmm you get up? I lead the Vice President on not so much sentences as idea voyages.
You think you just fell out of a coconut tree. You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
It's a process I call speaking without thinking. It's not about the destination of the thought. It's about the journey and how many words you use to describe the journey.
That's on top of everything else that we know and don't know yet based on what we've just been able to see. And because we've seen it or not doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
Whenever the Vice President gets a speech from her staff, the first thing I do is cut out all the words individually, and then I take those words to my word cave. That's where I wait to learn what order the universe wants them to be in. Words have vibrations, the feeling they give you is so much more powerful than what they need.
We have the ability to see what can be unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.
I hear the counter arguments all the time. People should be able to understand what their leaders are saying when they talk. But I prefer to leave Kamalist thoughts open to interpretation, like a work of modern art that you look at and go, I wonder what that was all about.
See the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future.
It really is such a career highlight to be working with someone with such an advanced mind space as the Vice President. I also sell Essential Oils on Facebook Marketplace.
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