Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have their microphones cut off while the other is delivering responses to questions during the final US election debate.
The US president has complained that a rule change to mute microphones for part of his final televised debate with Joe Biden is “very unfair” as well as voicing his displeasure over the topics chosen by the moderator.
The final debate, which takes place on Thursday, will see the candidates quizzed over 90 minutes with a section for uninterrupted remarks.
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It comes following the first US presidential debate that saw candidates continually interrupt one another with Joe Biden reacting to constant interruptions by Trump saying: "Will you shut up man?"
The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) on Monday announced that “in order to enforce this agreed upon rule, the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules”.
A statement from the commission read: “We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today. One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”
An angry President Donald Trump came out swinging on Monday against Dr Anthony Fauci, the press and polls that show him trailing Democrat Joe Biden in key battleground states in a disjointed closing message two weeks out from the US election.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said: "President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate"
A spokesman for Joe Biden said: "The Trump campaign is lying about that now because Donald Trump is afraid to face more questions about his disastrous Covid response.
“As usual, the president is more concerned with the rules of a debate than he is getting a nation in crisis the help it needs.”
NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker will chair the debate with Trump claiming that the correspondent is biased. He said “I will participate but it’s very unfair that they changed the topics and it’s very unfair that again we have an anchor who’s totally biased.”
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