NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker is speaking out on her experience moderating the final presidential debate between President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
After Thursday’s debate in Nashville, Tennessee, Welker was praised by liberal and conservative commentators alike for successfully moderating a civil and informative debate between the two candidates. In an interview with Elle, Welker described what it was like preparing for the event.
“I just kept saying to myself, ‘Listen and be present.’ I thought it was critical that we talked about the issues that mattered to voters, and I wanted the questions to be accessible. I wanted them to be meaningful to people,” Welker said.
In the weeks leading up to the debate, Welker called voters across the country to ask what issues they wanted the candidates to discuss before casting their votes. She conducted hours of research on the topics with her team and prepared by holding mock debates, testing a variety of questions, and devising strategies on how to move the candidates forward from topic to topic. She also called Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who moderated the chaotic first debate, for advice.
Welker said the first debate made her “think very seriously about the role of a moderator and what my tone would be.”
“My strategy going into this was, ‘How do we give the American people the information they need to have days before an election?’” she said.
Before the debate, Trump asserted that Welker as debate moderator would be “far worse” than his interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, who he described as exhibiting “bias, hatred, and rudeness.” Welker said she handed her phones over to her husband and a producer while preparing for the debate to avoid getting distracted.
“Of course, it never feels good to have people talking about you. I had to tune it out,” she said. “If I needed to know something, they let me know about it. Otherwise, I had to stay focused because I didn’t have time to get distracted.”
Trump, however, changed his tune toward Welker in the middle of the debate, complimenting the journalist on her performance as moderator. “I respect very much the way you’re handling this,” Trump said to Welker during the debate.
