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Chris Wallace, Steve Scully, Kristen Welker to moderate presidential debates

Susan Page of USA Today will moderate the vice presidential debate

Published: September 2, 2020 12:16pm

Updated: September 2, 2020 4:19pm

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Wednesday that Fox News' Chris Wallace, C-SPAN's Steve Scully and NBC News' Kristen Welker will moderate the three presidential debates this fall.

Susan Page of USA Today will be in control of the vice presidential debate between current Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Wallace is set to moderate the first debate, on September 29 at Case Western Reserve University. Wallace also moderated a 2016 presidential debate.

The second debate will be hosted by senior executive producer and political editor Steve Scully. It will take place in Miami on October 15 and will feature questions from undecided South Florida voters in a town hall style. 

The final debate, on October 22, will take place at Belmont University in Nashville. NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker will moderate. The style, which will be the same as the first debate, will take the form of an opening question from the moderator and each candidate will have two minutes to respond. There will then be a longer discussion of the question topic. There will be nine questions, each segment is meant to last 10 minutes. 

Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, will moderate the VP debate on October 7. 

Moderators will select their own questions, which will not be known to either candidate's camp prior to showtime. The commission will also have no prior knowledge of the questions.  

The Commission on Presidential Debates is a bipartisan organization that has made arrangements for the debates since 1988. 

Prior to today's announcement, the Trump campaign released a list of potential moderators that included several prominent Fox News and Business hosts, Saagar Enjeti, host of The Hill's "Rising with Krystal and Saagar," former Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker, and Just the News senior correspondent David Brody.