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Who’s To Blame For Trump’s Microphone Issues? What Did Hillary Know?

By Jason Reynolds
Published on: 00:11 PST, Oct 1, 2016

If you watched the first presidential debate on Monday, you may have been one of the millions who wondered why Donald Trump was sniffling. Was he sick? Were there some other issues going on? After the debate, Donald complained to the media in the spin room afterwards, saying that his microphone had issues, that it was defective. Many news outlets dismissed this as another one of Trump’s rants and some even labeled it as a conspiracy theory meant to detract from a seeming Clinton win. It turns out, however, that Trump was right.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) issued a statement on Friday, September 30, that confirmed what Donald has been saying all week.

In an uncharacteristically short one-line statement, the CPD stated, “Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump’s audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall.”

Hillary Clinton’s microphone had no such problems. In the past week, Clinton has made it a point to call out Trump for claiming his microphone was defective, snarkily shooting this barb after a reporter asked her about her microphone.

This raises several questions with Trump supporters. Namely, why did it take so long for someone to check on the microphone and why was the statement released on a Friday, the end of a weekly news cycle? For anyone who works or has worked in the A/V industry, microphone checks are a vital part of any major event. After all, nobody wants to have the mike cut out halfway through a Rolling Stones concert. How then, did this snafu get past initial checks? And once Donald complained about it, why did it take all week to check out? And if there were issues, why didn’t anyone in the debate hall take note and correct the issue?

Fridays are the typically the end of the news cycle. While certainly the CPD wanted to get the news out, by releasing it on a Friday, it means that everyone has to wait until Monday to question them about details. And you can bet that the questions will be coming. Do they need this time to figure out how to spin their own mistakes and prepare for a coverup?

You also have to wonder where the issue was. The short one-line statement by the CPD didn’t reveal any details about where the fault was or who is responsible. This is a big issue for Trump and for future debates in particular. Will Donald request that he have his own technicians look over and verify the working state of the equipment prior to the debate? And if he does, wouldn’t that mean that Hillary would be able to do the same?

[Photo by David Goldman/AP Images]

While the microphone issue didn’t affect the 81 million people who watched the debate online or on television, did the fault affect Donald Trump’s poise on stage? While some may claim that the microphone is a non-issue because it only affected the 2,000 people in the debate hall, it has had a much wider impact. After Trump spoke about his microphone issues, media outlets jumped on his claims, trying to point out how petty and bitter he was. With the four-day delay in between the debate and the released statement, the CPD basically gave Clinton and her supporters free reign to disparage Trump on national media.

The Daily Show, with 3.7 million followers on Twitter, 4.8 million Facebook followers, and 115,000 Instagram followers, also used this as an excuse to blast Trump.

You have to wonder how quickly they, or any other person who used the microphone as a way to paint Donald Trump in a negative light, will issue an apology. So far, there has been no response to this revelation from the Clinton campaign.

[Featured Image by John Locher/AP Images]

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