In Lebanon, the public political discourse is dominated not by print media, but by political talk shows aired live on TV. In fact, the Lebanese audience has a number of programs to choose from and follows them on a regular basis. On November 14, 2011, the episode of the program bi-Mawd?uu?iiya (‘with objectivity’) on the Lebanese TV channel MTV featured two Lebanese politicians – Fayez Cheker, the regional secretary of the Baath Party in Lebanon, and Mustafa Aloush, member of the political Bureau of the Future Movement. That week’s show, hosted by Waleed Abboud, had the conflict in Syria, which had been ongoing for almost nine months at that point, as well as its consequences for Lebanon as its topic. What started as a moderated political talk show, soon turned into a heated discussion between the two invitees that lead to personal insults and even the use of force, before the broadcasting was interrupted. It even gained attention in the media across the globe. Clearly, something must have gone wrong. The aim of this paper is to show that this escalation is not only due, as one might be inclined to assume, to the opposing political standpoints of the two participants – Cheker, as head of the Baath Party in Lebanon obviously pro-Assad, and Aloush, member of the Future Movement, and thus the March 14 bloc, anti-Assad – but rather a consequence of their choices in discourse strategies as well as their individual non-matching conversational styles. Following the methodology of Discourse Analysis, in particular Interactional Sociolinguistics, I will not only identify, compare and contrast their conversational styles (i.e. high-involvement vs. high-considerateness), but also analyze their choices in a number of discourse strategies – such as code and register, conversational code-switching, use of pronouns, address terms, framing, floor taking, prosody, etc. – as well as the impact of these choices – whether conscious or not – on the flow of conversation.