LONG ISLAND, N.Y., Sept. 26 (UPI) — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will meet Monday in the first general election debate of the 2016 presidential campaign. With the candidates polling close to a dead heat, here’s what you need to know:
WHEN: It begins at 9 p.m. EDT and is scheduled to last 90 minutes.
WHERE: Hofstra University, a private university on Long Island.
HOW TO WATCH: It will be difficult to avoid. You’ll find the broadcast on all the major networks and cable news channels. It will also be available to stream online via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook Live and via various news apps. For your convenience, we’ve embedded a live video stream above.
MODERATOR: NBC “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt.
Holt was chosen by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates to host the first debate. Trump has attacked him — and the other debate moderators — as biased, telling Fox News host Bill O’Reilly “Lester is a Democrat. I mean, they are all Democrats. Okay? It’s a very unfair system.”
Truth is, Lester is not a Democrat. He’s been a registered Republican since 2003, according to New York state voter records.
Trump has since said that he thinks Holt will be “very fair.”
DEBATE ISSUES & FORMAT: The topics “America’s Direction,” “Achieving Prosperity” and “Securing America” will be covered in six 15-minute segments. Each candidate will start the topic discussion with a two-minute speech, after which they’ll debate back and forth on the topic.
FACT-CHECKING: Much has been said about the torrent of falsehoods in the 2016 presidential campaign, and whether debate moderators should correct candidates when they are wrong or misleading. None of the major networks plans to do on-screen fact-checking and it’s up to the debate moderators as to how they will handle it. PolitiFact, a highly touted impartial fact-checker, has said it will have 18 fact-checkers working to correct falsehoods, posting to its Twitter feed.
