Getty Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang
Marianne Williamson, a Democratic candidate for President, has said that her mic was muted at times during the Democratic debate on Thursday too. Andrew Yang became a trend on Twitter after he said that his mic was muted during the debate and supporters found a video that might back up his claim. NBC, meanwhile, has said that they didn’t mute any mics during the debate. Now Williamson is corroborating Yang’s statement, saying the same thing happened to her. The debate was hosted by MSNBC, NBC, and Telemundo.
Williamson and Yang were among the candidates who spoke the least during the debates, The Washington Post shared. Williamson only spoke for five minutes and Yang only spoke for three minutes. Eric Swalwell only spoke for 4.3 minutes. Meanwhile, Joe Biden spoke for 13.6 minutes, Kamala Harris spoke for 11.9 minutes, and Bernie Sanders spoke for 11 minutes during the same debate.
I made a graph. Yang had far more donors than others who had up to 3.5x his speaking minutes #LetYangSpeak
Heavy reported extensively on Yang’s mic issue and other times that he’s been left out of MSNBC coverage in a story here. Now Williamson is saying the same thing happened to her.
She said in response to a tweet asking her about the mic issue: “As much fun as I’ve had laughing at all the understandable hilarious tweets about me today, the mic issue is not funny and yes it did happen. I tried a couple of times to jump in and my mic was not on. Particularly wanted in on the subject of race.”
@Gregoriancant As much fun as I’ve had laughing at all the understandable hilarious tweets about me today, the mic issue is not funny and yes it did happen. I tried a couple of times to jump in and my mic was not on. Particularly wanted in on the subject of race.
NBC News told CNN in a statement: “At no point during the debate was any candidate’s microphone turned off or muted.” They sent the same response to Newsweek.
Yang said that the microphone issue happened a few times during the debate. He told supporters after the debate, in part: “It’s this sort of thing where, it’s not like if you started talking, it takes over… It’s like I was talking, but nothing was happening. And it was like, ‘Oh f—.’ So that happened a bit too.”
Here’s a video of one of the moments when supporters say you can tell that Yang’s mic was turned off:
It appears from the video that either his mic was muted and he was faintly picked up by other mics, or his mic was leveled down. However, NBC has said this did not happen, so it’s unclear what was going on. Kirsten Gillibrand’s mic is clearly much louder than Yang’s when he tries to speak at the same time as her. Many candidates spoke out of turn during the debate and were clearly heard at other times too.
You can also see Joe Biden turning to look at Yang in the video above, indicating that he was talking loud enough for those near him to hear him, but not anyone else.
Yang has said publicly that his mic was turned off during the debate. He talks about it at 4:04 in the video below, when he was speaking to supporters after the debate.
@SaltySunRise @m_sami19 @Itri_Achemlal @KEEMSTAR @AndrewYang Link where Yang says his mic was off so he couldn’t add to the conversation. Like he tried to say “Hey”. But couldn’t. #FuckMSNBC
t.co/AVC2q9CMHY
Yang isn’t blaming the possible mic muting on his entire debate performance. After the debate, he tweeted about his reflections and things he could do better.
Second, I feel bad for those who tuned in to see and support me that I didn’t get more airtime. Will do better (my mic being off unless called on didn’t help) and glad to have another opportunity in July (and afterwards)!
Third, this format is not a natural one for me at all. Requires very specific behaviors that feel very forced.
Overall I’m pumped for what we accomplished and even more pumped to take what I’ve learned and get out there again soon. 😀👍🇺🇸
Yang now has 130,000 donors, which is enough to meet the donor requirement for being in the Democratic debates in September. The other requirement is hitting 2 percent in qualified polls.
Yang’s supporters have pointed out times before when he was left off MSNBC graphics. Here’s one video where the monitor quit working right when they started to talk about him.
Okay, this one is actually really funny. Hat’s off on this one, MSNBC.
“Who else is on that stage with the former Vice President, with Bernie Sanders, you know Andrew Yang… whoops… my screen just went out!”
Before the debates this week, when MSNBC had a graphic showing the “Showdown in the South” that was coming to Miami, they left both Yang and Williamson off the original graphic, and instead included candidates who weren’t qualified for the debates.
After a lot of complaints online, MSNBC fixed the graphic and added Yang and Williamson.
Looks like we made enough noise, #YangGang. @AndrewYang has been unerased by @MSNBC (and @marwilliamson too). #Yang2020
And then there was this moment when Yang finally appeared on an MSNBC graphic, but they didn’t actually say Yang’s name while they said everyone else’s name:
You can see more examples of MSNBC’s previous coverage of Yang in Heavy’s story here. NBC still says that the mics were never muted or turned off. But now Williamson is corroborating Yang’s story. We will update this story if more candidates share the same.
If you have comments about this story or additional video showing the mics muted, tweet the author of this article.
READ NEXT: Yang’s Muted Mic Is Not the First Time His Supporters Were Worried About MSNBC Coverage