After the chaos of the first two presidential debates (including the absence of the actual second debate (open in new tab)), the Biden-Trump showdown series (open in new tab) finally comes to a close on Thursday, October 22, at 9 p.m. ET at Belmont University in Nashville. In the third debate (or second, if you want to be literal), Joe Biden and Donald Trump will take the podium one last time, each outlining their plans to help the American people and shouting nonsense at their opponent.

Navigating the two candidates through what promises to be another incredibly exhausting (open in new tab) 90-minute spectacle is Kristen Welker, one of NBC News' White House correspondents. With years of experience on shows like "Weekend Today" and "Meet the Press," asking politicians for answers and moderating crowded roundtables, Welker may finally hold the key to making the presidential debates civil and productive. Here's what you need to know about Welker before she takes the stage with the candidates at Belmont University's Curb Events Center.

Her background is quite extensive: she has been a broadcast journalist since graduating from Harvard University in 1998 with a degree in history; prior to joining NBC News, she worked as a reporter and She joined NBC News in 2010 and spent nearly five years at the local Philadelphia NBC affiliate before becoming the network's White House correspondent in 2011.

In her current role, Welker traveled extensively with members of the Obama administration and was a key member of a female-led team (open in new tab) that was at the forefront of NBC News' 2016 election coverage, reporting primarily from Hillary Clinton's campaign trail.NBC News' 2016 In covering the entire 2016 election, Welker was responsible for breaking several key stories in the campaign, including Biden's decision not to run for president that year.

He has also appeared on many NBC and MSNBC news programs, including NBC Nightly News and Meet the Press, and earlier this year was named co-anchor of Weekend Today. 1997 intern at Today and Weekend Today. Weekend Today co-anchor appointment, along with White House correspondent Peter Alexander, more than 20 years after working as a researcher.

Welker is known for being unafraid to ask tough questions and for rarely allowing politicians to avoid answering them; according to his official NBC biography (opens in new tab), in one particularly high-profile case in 2018, Welker was then Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who was then Secretary of Homeland Security, asked her about girls being held in border detention facilities, sparking the #WhereAreTheGirls movement. And this past July, she made headlines when she pressed White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany to clarify Donald Trump's constant hand-wringing about facemasks, including disparaging them and praising them as necessary to protect against COVID-19 (new tab).

That's right. Welker was just named the 2020 Outstanding Broadcast Journalist of the Year (opens in new tab) at the Washington Women in Journalism Awards last month. She also won a National Emmy for her contributions to NBC News' coverage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash and was nominated for another award in her first year with the company for her coverage of the 2010 midterm elections.

In his acceptance speech for the de facto Outstanding Broadcast Journalist Award in September, Welker attributed much of his success to the guidance and support he received from mentors such as NBC News' Andrea Mitchell and PBS' Gwen Ifill.

"I am very grateful to these women. And I feel strongly that it is the responsibility of all of us to return the favor and help the next generation of women journalists reach their full potential," Welker said. We all know the value and importance of building each other up. We all know the value and importance of competing with each other and at the same time supporting each other.

Yes, again. She co-anchored (opens in new tab) the November 2019 Democratic debate with Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell, and Ashley Parker. In that crowded debate, Welker asked pointed questions (opens in new tab) about universal health care, affordable housing, and white supremacy to candidates such as Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

In addition, her selection as moderator for the final 2020 debate made her the first black woman to moderate a presidential debate since Carol Simpson led a town hall-style debate between candidates George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot in 1992 moderator.

For the presidential and vice presidential debates, the moderator is responsible for researching and selecting topics for the candidates to discuss, and Welker announced her selection on October 16. According to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the broad topics Welker plans to ask each presidential candidate about are as follows (opens in new tab):

Unless there is major news before the October 22 debate, the format In terms of format, the final debate will be very similar to the first, with 15 minutes allotted for each topic, with Biden and Trump speaking first on each topic for two minutes each, followed by their opponents' rebuttals. However, this debate is expected to differ from the previous debate in terms of decorum. After an upsetting first debate in which one interruption-prone candidate repeatedly rehashed his opponent's allotted speaking time, the CPD promised to update the rules of the debate; the CPD promised that days before the final showdown between Trump and Biden (opens in new tab), late on October 19, the candidates microphone, announced that they would be muted during each other's first two-minute responses to Welker's questions and unmuted for the remainder of the debate.

While the Biden campaign did not mention Welker's role in the final debate, the Trump campaign definitely did. The weekend before the debate, after a story broke about Welker's parents making large donations to the Democratic candidate (which, of course, had nothing to do with Welker's ability to debate fairly), Trump tweeted (open in new tab).

A few days later, he appeared on "Fox & Friends" (open in new tab) and repeated his attacks on Welker. She said he "cannot be neutral at all," and called him "totally partisan" in reference to her parents' political contributions, which were also not her contributions. Incidentally, there is no record of Welker donating to the Democratic Party or any other political campaign (open in new tab).

As is often the case, the president's words directly contradict past statements by the president and the administration regarding Welker. When she was named co-anchor of Weekend Today in January of this year, the President congratulated her on her new job (opens in new tab) at a press conference, adding that "they made a very wise decision." Additionally, in an October 9 interview with Fox News' Martha MacCallum (opens in new tab), senior Trump advisor Jason Miller said, "I think very highly of Kristen Welker. I think she will do a great job moderating the third debate. I think she is a journalist with a very fair approach. And I think she will be a very good choice for this third debate."

She is married to John Hughes, but not that John Hughes. The John Hughes who plays Welker is a marketing executive at Merck, not the creative genius who created masterpieces like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Breakfast Club." The more you know