RFK Jr. Fails to Qualify for CNN Debate
Ringo Chiu via AP
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not be joining President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on the debate stage next week, after failing to reach two of the required three criteria by the Thursday June 20 deadline.
CNN posted the announcement shortly after midnight Thursday morning that Biden and Trump were heading for a “historic showdown” with the “stage now set” for their June 27 meeting.
“The showdown will make history as the first debate between a sitting president and a former president. It will also be the first debate since 2020 featuring either Biden, who did not face a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination, or Trump, who skipped those held during the Republican primary race,” reported CNN.
With the “debate qualification window” closed at 12:00:01 a.m. ET, only Biden and Trump had satisfied CNN’s constitutional, ballot qualification, and polling thresholds, established by the network in May.
Kennedy had met the constitutional criteria, being legally qualified to run for president and having filed a formal statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission, but failed to meet the other two.
The polling threshold required a candidate to receive at least 15 percent support in four separate national qualified polls of registered or likely voters, and the ballot qualification criteria required a candidate to appear on a sufficient number of state ballots for it to be possible to achieve 270 Electoral College votes, the minimum needed to win the presidency.
As The New York Times noted, Kennedy only had three of the four polls needed and fell even further short regarding his ballot qualification, achieving “less than a third” of the number he needed, “officially on the ballot in only six states — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah — totaling 89 Electoral College votes.”
The June 27 debate in Atlanta will be hosted by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and will last 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.
Per debate rules agreed to by the Biden and Trump campaigns, there will be no studio audience and the candidates’ microphones will be muted except when it is their turn to speak. No props or pre-written notes will be allowed on stage, and each candidate will be given a pen, a pad of note paper, and a bottle of water.
