Who Are the Moderators of the Trump/Clinton Presidential Debates?

After a campaign season that has seemed like it has gone on for years and years, we are finally just days away from the very first Presidential debate. On the stage Monday night will be the two candidates representing the major parties — Hillary Clinton of the Democrats and the GOP’s Donald Trump — going head-to-head live from Hofstra University in Long Island.

The Commission on Presidential Debates recently announced the moderators for the events, a difficult task considering the challenge of finding seasoned vets who are unoffensive enough to be seen as objective and fair.

All debates are from 9-10:30 PM Eastern and will be airing on all major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, MSNBC, Univision, and C-SPAN) simultaneously. Mediaite will have livestreams available online to watch.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 (PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 1)
The first debate on Monday, September 26 will be moderated by Lester Holt from NBC, and the current host of NBC Nightly News. Despite previously crediting Holt as a fair choice, Trump this week slammed the broadcast anchor,

saying, “Lester is a Democrat… Okay? It’s a very unfair system.” Holt, however, is a registered Republican, and has been since 2003.

The debate will take place on the campus of Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island; the event — which will mark not only the first Clinton v. Trump showdown but also the first debate featuring Trump and only one other person — will consist of six 15-minute segments. The segments will be preselected by Holt; third party candidates Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and independent Evan McMullin did not qualify to debate.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4 (VP DEBATE)
The next event on the debate schedule will be Tuesday, October 4 in Farmville, Virginia from the campus of Longwood University. It will feature the two Vice Presidential candidates going head-to-head. Clinton’s Veep choice Tim Kaine of Virginia will be the hometown favorite taking on Mike Pence of Indiana, the governor who joined Trump’s ticket on July 16. The event will be moderated by CBS News’s Elaine Quijano, a weekday anchor for CBSN and a stalwart of the network’s political coverage.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9
The second time that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will square off will be in Missouri on October 9, a controversial date set by the Commission given that it will be going up against Sunday Night Football on NBC (it was a move that was decried by Donald Trump, although the bipartisan

Commission released the schedule a full year ago). The event will be co-moderated by Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC from the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, and will be produced in the “town meeting” style. While the moderators for the event will certainly be contributing many questions, the candidates will also face participants in the room and via social media.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19
The third and final presidential debate will be occur just a few weeks before election day live from beautiful Las Vegas. It will follow the same format as the first debate, and will be moderated by Chris Wallace from Fox News. UNLV will be the school hosting the event, which will serve as the final showdown between the major party candidates before voters head to the polls just 20 days later.