On Monday September 26, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go head-to-head in the first presidential debate. The debate starts at 9 p.m. EST and will air on all major news networks and stream live on Twitter. Make sure you’re following Law Street on Twitter and Facebook for live debate coverage and commentary. Here’s everything you need to know heading into round one.

The Participants

Clinton and Trump are the only two participants in Monday’s debate, which will take place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. But what about the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson? The Commission on Presidential Debates, which has been sponsoring debates since 1987, invites only those candidates who receive at least 15 percent support in an average of five national polls. Clinton (43 percent) and Trump (40.4) averaged far above the 15 percent bar, while Johnson (8.4) and Stein (3.2), did not.

After months of scathing tweets and abrasive stump speeches, Monday’s debate will be the first direct engagement between Clinton and Trump of the 2016 campaign season. Expect both to make an attempt at softening their images amid historically low favorability ratings.

The Moderator

The man in the middle for debate number one is NBC’s “Nightly News” host, Lester Holt. In February 2015, Holt replaced Brian Williams as anchor after Williams was dropped for embellishing his war-reporting experiences in Iraq.

Holt, 57, has decades of journalism experience and is known for diving into the thick of a story, rather than reporting on it from the periphery. A week before the debate, Trump let loose a pre-emptive missile toward Holt by calling the debate “rigged.” “Look, it’s a phony system, said Trump in an interview Monday with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “Lester is a Democrat. I mean, they are all Democrats. Okay? It’s a very unfair system.”

Holt is not, in fact, a Democrat, but a registered Republican.

The Topics

The format for the debate is as follows: there will be six topics touched on for 15 minutes each for a total of 90 minutes. The three main topics chosen by Holt are: “America’s direction,” “Achieving Prosperity,” and “Securing America.”

In her primary debates, Clinton projected a substantive, detail-oriented posture, largely free of insults and the noise that so often dominated the Republican primary debates. She’ll likely do the same on Monday, spending her allotted time fleshing out her policies as much as possible. Trump might take a different tack. A formidable showman, Trump branded his Republican opponents with catchy nicknames in the primary debates, turning nearly all of his opponents into laughing stocks and caricatures.

But perhaps America will see a new Trump come Monday. “I think this, if she treats me with respect, I will treat her with respect,” said Trump during his interview with O’Reilly.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The trouble isn’t quite over yet for Brian Williams. Williams, who headed up “NBC Nightly News,” was suspended for six months by NBC this winter. The suspension came in light of the revelation that Williams had not been truthful about an instance in which he claimed to have been in a military helicopter that took fire during the early days of the Iraq War. Now it has come to light that there were other instances in which Williams lied or embellished aspects of his reporting–at least ten have been reported so far.

The current investigation is being conducted internally at NBC, and is said to have five different journalists working on it. The investigators are being led by NBC News senior executive producer Richard Esposito. Given that Williams’ suspension will technically end in August, NBC is under pressure to figure out whether or not they’ll reinstate him to the position. Lester Holt is currently manning the news desk while Williams’ fate remains up in the air.

However, the new discoveries of deception don’t bode particularly well for Williams. Anonymous sources with knowledge of the inquiry told The New York Times about the nature of the new findings, stating:

The episodes under review included details of the incident in Iraq in 2003; statements Mr. Williams made about a missile attack while he was traveling in another helicopter over northern Israel in 2006; and the circumstances under which he received a fragment of a helicopter that crashed during the mission to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.

According to the Washington Post, there was also an inconsistency in his reporting of events during the Arab Spring uprisings. Williams claimed on “The Daily Show” that he saw certain events of the uprisings firsthand in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, but now it’s unclear if he was actually reporting from the location.

Whether or not the exact details of what Williams was not truthful about will be released to the public remains unknown. If he is, in fact, let go from his position at NBC, executives may need to keep those accusations secret in light of some sort of severance agreement.

According to inside reports, high-ups at NBC are currently meeting to determine Williams’ future. These top players include NBC Universal chief executive Steve Burke, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack, and NBC News president Deborah Turness. While NBC hasn’t confirmed much of this, and this information appears to have mainly come from anonymous sources, it’s clear that matters are on the move. Right now, it doesn’t seem like it would be a particularly good idea to bet on Williams keeping his job, particularly if more instances of exaggeration or untruthfulness come to light.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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