Thursday night’s final debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is certain to be a historic event just 12 days before Election Day and the culmination of the unforgettable campaign of 2020.

The debate might also go down in history as the last one organized by the existing Commission on Presidential Debates. This year the commission has exposed itself as unfair, biased, and inept. It’s time has passed.

The three presidential debates and a single vice presidential debate normally scheduled are supposed to be the premiere primetime events in which the American people can see the candidates up close and personal. But this year it looks like the debate commission is working to give Joe Biden the advantage.

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Whether it’s a canceled debate, muted microphones, or changed topics, this has become a fiasco. Indeed, the Commission on Presidential Debates can be added to the vast anti-Trump conspiracy along with the left-wing media, academic elite, Hollywood, and an army of deep state bureaucrats.

NBC’s Kristen Welker, the debate moderator, is under immense pressure to ask tough, pointed questions of Biden and be impartial. In the wake of the debacle involving C-SPAN’s Steve Scully — the chosen moderator for the canceled second debate, who interned for Biden in the U.S. Senate — there’s evidence that Welker leans to the left as well.

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In addition to her job working for NBC News — which has behaved more like a Democratic Super PAC than a news organization during the Trump administration — members of Welker’s family are major contributors to Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden.

Can you imagine the reaction from the left if the debate commission chose a moderator whose family donated to President Trump and other Republican candidates?  You probably can’t because it would never happen.

This is crunch time in the most important election of our lifetimes. Which way our great country turns will be determined by the results.

Will we remain on the path of free-market capitalism and economic prosperity for all under President Trump? Or will we make the dangerous pivot to socialism and the federal government being the major force in our lives under Joe Biden?  

There are literally dozens of important questions that could be covered at the debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., but there are only a handful that are absolutely essential.

First and foremost, Joe Biden must be asked about his knowledge of his son Hunter’s corrupt overseas business dealings and whether the former vice president personally benefitted from those dealings.

As of this writing, the Biden campaign has still not made a statement questioning the authenticity of the inflammatory emails at the root of the scandal.

The American people have a right to know the identity of “the big guy” referred to in the email discussing millions of dollars in payments from Communist Chinese interests. Joe Biden must tell the American people if he’s ever received any income that was derived from a foreign business deal involving his son Hunter or anyone else in his family.

Voters are rightly concerned about the perception that these alleged deals put Joe Biden in a compromised position if he takes office. It’s time to step up and answer these questions. If Biden is convinced this is nothing but a smear campaign he should agree with the appointment of an independent special counsel like Robert Mueller to commence a review to make sure nothing improper happened.

Next, the American people deserve a thorough answer from Biden on the matter of tax increases, rather than just more canned talking points. The former vice president is campaigning on the false assertion that he won’t raise taxes on anyone who makes under $400,000 a year. Welker must pin him down on this point because repealing the Trump tax cuts would raise every American’s federal taxes.

Furthermore, Biden must tell the American people who would pay for his plans to expand ObamaCare to include a public option. A recent headline in The Wall Street Journal states: “Biden’s Public Option Would Mean Massive Tax Hikes.”

Then Biden must come clean on his intentions when it comes to ending the Senate filibuster and packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices who would rubberstamp his far-left agenda.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to send Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination to the Senate floor Thursday for a final vote, expected Monday. Judge Barrett is going to be confirmed, so Biden’s dodge that he’ll answer the question about court packing depending on what the Senate decides about the Barrett nomination is disingenuous.

Biden must answer this critically important question honestly and forthrightly at the debate.  Threatening to drastically alter our core system of checks and balances is enormously consequential to the future of our country and should be in no way minimized by Biden, NBC or anyone else.

Biden must show some guts and answer the question on the big stage before a national audience.

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Biden must also be quizzed on is his plans to “redirect” police funding and tell voters exactly what “reimagining” policing means.

Both Biden and his running mate — Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — have been all over the map on this question that’s of paramount concern to American families. For instance, in June, Harris sent a tweet designed to help bail out rioters in Minnesota.

It seems that Biden-Harris have a different response for this issue depending on whatever group they’re talking to on any given day. It’s time for Biden to show some courage and give it to the American people straight.

When it comes to American workers and manufacturing jobs, Biden’s copycat rhetoric this year sounds eerily similar to the President Trump’s long-time trademark policies.

Biden must be asked how he now can claim to support the forgotten men and women in America and making products here at home when he supports policies that will destroy their way of life.

Will Biden really shut down our economy on account of COVID-19 again if the scientists claim it’s needed? Will he make good on his promises to reenter the disastrous Paris Climate treaty and adopt economy-destroying parts of the radical Green New Deal?

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Biden has a decades-long record littered with support for bad trade deals, job-killing regulations, and enriching Communist China. You can’t have it both ways, Joe.    

If these five questions aren’t part of the debate, it will confirm that when it comes to the debate commission, the fix is in. The American people deserve answers to these unvarnished, must-ask questions.

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