2020 race: Donald Trump hopes for debate game-changer

Donald Trump will get his best chance for a campaign comeback in Friday’s presidential debate as Joe Biden’s poll lead narrows.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden will go head to head in their second debate on Friday (AEDT). Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump will get his best chance yet to spark a campaign comeback when he faces his opponent Joe Biden in the final presidential debate on Friday (AEDT), with polls now showing a slight reduction in Mr Biden’s lead.

With less than two weeks to go before the November 3 poll, the Trump campaign is searching for a game-changer to give the president the momentum he showed in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.

In that campaign, Mr Trump came from seven points down just weeks before the poll to score an unexpected victory against Hillary Clinton.

Mr Biden currently leads the president by 8.6 points nationally, an election-winning lead if he can maintain it in the final weeks. However the former vice president’s advantage has slipped slightly from 10.3 points on October 11.

Mr Biden’s advantage over Mr Trump in the battleground states has also slipped slightly from an average of 5 points a week ago to 3.9 points.

The Biden campaign has warned the gap between the two contenders will narrow as Election Day comes closer and says there is no room for complacency.

Mr Trump’s advisers say the president will be less aggressive in the final debate in Nashville, comparing to his brawling performance in the first debate in Cleveland. Mr Trump will use the debate to confront Mr Biden directly over New York Post reports that allege when Mr Biden was Vice President in 2015 he met with an adviser to the Ukraine energy company, Burisma, where his son Hunter Biden was a board member.

The Post says these emails were found on a computer hard drive which Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer shop.

Both Mr Biden and his son Hunter have denied any such meeting took place.

But Mr Trump is making the issue a key part of his election campaign and on Wednesday (AEDT) he called on Attorney General Bill Barr to take action against Mr Biden.

“He’s got to act. And he’s got to act fast,” Mr Trump said.

“This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election. And, by the way, we’re doing very well. We’re going to win the election.”

Mr Trump, who held a rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday (AEDT), has sharpened his attacks on Mr Biden in recent days, describing him as “corrupt” and a “criminal” and saying the Biden family was “a criminal enterprise.”

Meanwhile Mr Biden has spent another day off the campaign trail as he prepares for the debate. The final face-to-face meeting between the two men will be one of the final opportunities for Mr Trump to change the momentum of a race in which his 77-year-old opponent has retained a steady lead of between 7 and 10 points for months.

Mr Trump, who refused to participate in the scheduled second debate last week because it would be a virtual debate, has criticised the moderator in Friday’s debate as a ‘radical Democrat.’

Mr Trump said the moderator, NBC’s White House correspondent Kristen Welker, was a radical Democrat who had “always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I’ll still play the game.”

The Trump campaign has also objected to modified rules which will see the microphone of each nominee muted while the other gives two minute remarks at the start of each topic.

The changes were designed to prevent the sort of interruptions that occurred during the wild debate in Cleveland.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien says the president “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 favoured candidate.”

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)