CNN has announced the moderators for its first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate: Anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
Tapper and Bash, who co-host the network’s Sunday show State of the Union and also have their own weekday programs on the network, will serve as moderators for CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate on Jan. 10 from Des Moines, Iowa. The debate will air live at 9 p.m. on CNN channels and on CNN Max.
CNN has not announced who will moderate the network’s second GOP debate, scheduled to take place in New Hampshire on Jan. 21. CNN announced both debates last Thursday, and while the Jan. 10 will commence as planned, there have been some question marks around the New Hampshire debate.
For instance, Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire was already scheduled to host the ABC News-WMUR-TV Republican primary debate on Jan. 18, and was surprised to hear of CNN’s New Hampshire debate on its campus.
“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement last Friday.
The state’s Republican party chair Chris Ager was even more blunt in a statement last week to the New York Times.
“The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Ager told NYT in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”
CNN said in a statement last Friday: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”