Late-Night Hosts Doubt a Mute Button Will Bring Order to Next Trump, Biden Debate

Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and other late-night hosts questioned the efficacy of adding a mute button to cut down on interruptions during this Thursday’s presidential debate.

As Colbert explained on The Late Show, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced it would mute the microphones of Donald Trump and Joe Biden while the other was speaking, after Trump interrupted Biden and moderator Chris Wallace over a hundred times at the first debate. Colbert, however, was skeptical that would stop Trump, cracking, “Of course, Trump could just interrupt Biden by walking over to his podium, which is why the Debate Commission is also putting him on a child leash.”

Noah was on the same wavelength over on The Daily Show, joking, “Trump doesn’t care if you mute his microphone. He’s just gonna shout. Or even worse, he’ll just walk over to Biden and use his mic. He’ll probably lick it, too, just to mark his territory.”

On Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel joked that using the mute button was the exact same strategy his daughter’s kindergarten teacher deployed to manage an unruly Zoom class. “Would a mute button even work on Donald Trump?” he wondered. “I feel like if you turn off his microphone, he’ll just pull another one out of his hair or something.”

And on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon succinctly joked: “That’s the current state of our politics — we need a mute button. Meanwhile, Americans are like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve been doing that. For a long time.’” He also cracked that, for Trump, “The only thing scarier than a mute button is the SAP button,” and added, “If the mute button doesn’t work, [moderator] Kristen Welker will have a water spritzer to spray the candidates. It’s more humane.”