Trump v Biden debate format aims to avoid a repeat of 2020 chaos

'Will you shut up, man?" It was hardly oratory worthy of Abraham Lincoln, but Joe Biden's primal plea in the face of relentless interruptions and heckling from Donald Trump provided a defining soundbite of the 2020 presidential debates.

- Robert Tait

The two will face each other again on Thursday for the first of two head-to-head debates in the 2024 campaign, under new rules designed to prevent matters degenerating as they did four years ago. Biden and Trump will meet in a TV studio without the presence of a partisan audience, which some saw as an essential ingredient of Trump's rabble-rousing approach. To counteract the repeated butting-in that so irked Biden, the candidates will have their microphones muted when it is not their turn to speak.

But the debates are also the first in decades to be staged entirely by commercial TV networks - including two advertising breaks and without the oversight of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the independent, non-profit body that has governed their rules since 1988. Some critics say they fear that commercialising the process could lead to shorter, less substantive answers that are geared more to generating conflict and soundbites than to enlightening voters.