A US political commentator says Donald Trump is purposely undermining the moderator of Friday's debate so he can claim 'it was all stacked against me' if it doesn't go his way.
Danielle McLaughlin spoke to The AM Show on Friday about the debate which is set to take place from 2pm (NZ time) in Nashville, Tennessee.
She also said she expects Trump to find a way to question opponent Joe Biden on his son's alleged business dealings.
There are less than two weeks left before Americans take to the voting booths to elect their next President.
Friday's debate will hold even more weight after the second presidential debate was cancelled.
The Presidential Commission on Debates announced on Tuesday the third debate will feature a mute button after the chaos of the first debate.
The first debate's moderator had trouble controlling the contenders, leading to what commentators described as "a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck".
Therefore on Friday, during the contender's two-minute-long opening remarks, the other candidate's microphone will be muted to ensure there are no interruptions.
Both microphones will be turned on to allow a back and forth debate after that time.
McLaughlin said she expects Trump will be the most affected by the change, as Biden "pulled a lot of funny faces" during the first debate but didn't do a lot of interrupting.
"I think the mute button will be more of an issue for Donald Trump based on his last debate performance where it seemed that his entire strategy was to interrupt Joe Biden and interrupt his stream of thought," she said.
"I do think [the mute button] was targeted at the President so Americans can really hear these two men talk about the issues which actually matter to Americans."
The AM Show host Duncan Garner said he expected the button to cause all sorts of problems and McLaughlin said she "doesn't disagree".
"It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in practice," she said.
"The President is already undermining the debate moderator as someone who is biased against him, already crying foul about this idea of muting the button which is very clearly a tactic to be able to say, after the fact, that 'it was all stacked against me, biased media, yadda, yadda'."
Recently there has also been a scandal around Hunter Biden's business dealings while his father Joe Biden was Vice President.
On October 14, the New York Post claimed they had obtained foreign government emails from Hunter's laptop.
The emails allegedly show Hunter helped to arrange a meeting between Joe Biden and an executive at a Ukrainian energy company.
Also on the laptop were reportedly sexually explicit images and video, along with material showing him taking drugs.
In a tweet on Monday, Donald Trump called the emails "major corruption."
"Joe Biden is a corrupt politician, and everybody knows it. Now you have the proof, perhaps like never was had before on a major politician. Laptop plus. This is the second biggest political scandal in our history!"
McLaughlin said she expects Trump to bring up the emails during the debate, despite it not being one of the topics.
"As we saw with the vice presidential debate when Vice president Mike Pence challenged Kamala Harris on court-packing or expanding the supreme court," she said.
"I don't think there is any doubt Donald Trump is going to use his time, probably in response to something entirely unrelated, to go after Joe Biden, to ask about this laptop, to ask about the emails, and to ask about the alleged and undue influence that Hunter Biden is supposed to have utilised."
For live updates of the final US presidential debate, tune into newshub.co.nz from 12pm on Friday (NZ time). The debate begins at 2pm.
