Harris and Trump prep for debate that could define rest of the campaign

When Vice President Harris and former president Donald Trump meet Tuesday night in Philadelphia, they will have taken dramatically different approaches to preparing for the first — and likely only — presidential debate between the two candidates.

Harris spent most of the past four days ensconced in Pittsburgh’s Omni William Penn Hotel for an intensive “debate camp.” Her aides created a mock set-up to mimic the layout of the debate studio; cast a veteran Donald Trump stand-in to unleash harsh attacks and offensive comments; and put the vice president through hours of rehearsed questions.

About 330 miles to the east, Trump spent much of the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., opting for “policy sessions” with aides and allies instead of traditional practice runs. The former president has participated in about a half-dozen of the sessions in recent weeks, reviewing Harris’s policy record from her 2020 presidential campaign and practicing how to respond to an expected barrage of attacks on his character.

And yet for all the attacks they have exchanged, Harris and Trump have never met. The event will likely draw the largest audience for either candidate before November, and both sides agree the faceoff, hosted by ABC News, carries unusually high stakes, given the campaign’s compressed timetable and the fact that polls show it is essentially tied.

The previous presidential debate, in June, dramatically reshaped the campaign when President Joe Biden stumbled over his words, struggling at times to complete sentences and landing few attacks on Trump. The performance exacerbated long-standing concerns about Biden’s age, eventually leading him to abandon his reelection campaign and endorse Harris.

This time, Trump will face an opponent who is expected to be far more formidable on the debate stage and is intent on creating a contrast not only with Biden but with Trump’s often-rambling appearances. A former prosecutor who burnished her national profile in Senate hearings by aggressively questioning Trump appointees, Harris planned to deploy the same tactics on Tuesday, firing back at any questionable remarks by Trump and trying to fact-check him in real time.

Those plans have hit a snag of sorts. Harris’s aides wanted ABC to change the debate rules so both microphones would remain unmuted throughout the debate, hoping that would encourage Trump to go wildly off-script and let Harris issue sharp retorts. Trump signaled a willingness to unmute the mics, but his aides were determined to keep the rules in place, telling the former president that Harris’s team was trying to set him up.

Harris aides fear Trump will unleash so many dubious statements or attacks during his uninterrupted speaking time that she will be unable to challenge them all, according to people familiar with her planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. After losing the fight on the microphones, Harris aides spent the weekend revising their strategy, hoping she will find other ways to parry Trump’s attacks, the people said.

Harris’s aides say she is prepared for whatever version of Trump shows up Tuesday, although given the rules, they expect the former president to be relatively disciplined and perform much as he did against Biden in June.

Some Harris allies privately concede that the fracas over the microphones was part of an effort to lower expectations for the vice president’s performance, fearing that too many Democrats and swing voters expect Harris to obliterate Trump on stage. Harris’s campaign has repeatedly noted that Tuesday will be Trump’s seventh presidential debate.

“We expect Donald Trump will be ready for the debate,” Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “He is a showman who won his most recent debate back in June, and we know he has been practicing even more and preparing harder than ever before.”

He added: “The Vice President will come to the debate prepared to share her vision for a new way forward for our country that turns the page on the past, and we believe it will crystallize for the American people what is at stake in this election.”

One concession that Harris’s campaign won: ABC News has assigned a producer to monitor each candidate during commercial breaks, especially if they leave the stage, to ensure no aides pass them notes or try to communicate with them, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

Trump’s camp, for its part, tried to raise expectations for his rival.

“The high-bar expectation facing Kamala Harris is that for every new idea put forward, Harris has to explain both the damage she’s done to our economy as the sitting Vice President, as well as answer why she hasn’t implemented any of these new plans during the last 3 ½ years,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said in a statement.

“Further complicating matters is that Harris’ new Obama campaign advisors have told her to hide from the press for two months, further raising expectations for the voters,” Miller added. “The one thing we do know, however, is that Kamala Harris’ values have not changed, and we will be educating the American public as to what that means policy-wise, in great detail.”

Politicians who have debated Trump in the past say a key to success for Harris will be her ability to avoid taking the former president’s bait on personal attacks, a mistake Biden made in the June 27 debate when he sparred with Trump over their respective golf games.

“Be who you are,” said former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. “Figure out what you want to communicate and communicate it. Don’t get sidetracked. If somebody’s going to be really rude to you, you can point that out, but my sense is getting into a name-calling situation doesn’t benefit anybody.”

In his preparations, Trump has largely leaned on the same small group of aides to help prepare for this debate as he did for the last one: Miller, the senior adviser; Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.); Stephen Miller, a top policy adviser; and Vince Haley and Ross Worthington, two of his speechwriters.

The Trump team also brought in former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who sought the Democratic nomination in 2020 but is now backing Trump. Gabbard debated Harris during the 2020 primary and has helped Trump think through how the vice president might answer questions and how she might use gender against him, Trump advisers said.

Gabbard has not played Harris in a mock debate setting, but one Trump adviser said she has helped Trump “tremendously.”

Trump’s aides expect Harris will unleash a litany of personal attacks about his legal cases, contrasting her record as a former prosecutor with his status as a felon. They are also planning for criticisms of his record on the covid-19 pandemic and his lack of progress on passing infrastructure legislation when he was president, despite years of promises to do so.

“One of the goals is to condition him to those attacks so he doesn’t overreact,” a Trump adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential preparations.

Trump’s aides have given him reams of materials as fodder for attacks on Harris’s previous liberal policy positions, including her proposal to ban fracking and her support for Medicare for All, neither of which Harris still embraces. They have also compiled information on Harris’s record as a prosecutor in San Francisco, bringing up individual cases they think will embarrass her.

“We are trying to get her off-script so she will make a mistake,” said the Trump adviser with knowledge of the preparations.

Trump has eschewed practicing with podiums, and he does not like the public perception that he is practicing at all, advisers say. Instead, he has often used conference tables at his clubs or taken time during airplane flights. Aides say the former president views rallies — he held one in Wisconsin on Saturday — and interviews as the best preparation for the debate.

The former president has promised his advisers he will not be as aggressive as he was during the first 2020 debate with Biden, when he repeatedly interrupted Biden and talked over him in a widely mocked performance. Trump now privately blames a coronavirus diagnosis that he denied at the time as the reason he did so poorly, people who have spoken to him say.

In preparing for Tuesday’s debate, Harris aides say they know the vice president still faces the challenge of introducing herself to large swaths of voters, and they expect the viewing audience Tuesday night to include many voters who have not yet made up their mind and might ultimately decide the election. There will not be a live audience in the studio.

Harris’s campaign appearances so far, including her speech at the Democratic National Convention, were widely seen as successes by her advisers, but they said they recognize that an unscripted debate will have a different, potentially more skeptical audience.

“We feel good about how the convention introduced her to the country,” a Harris ally said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the preparations. “We understand more target voters — whether swing voters or soft potential nonvoters — are going to be watching the debate more intensely than they did the convention.”

For that reason, Harris has spent the weekend focused on answers that incorporate her agenda and her biography, especially aspects of her life before the vice presidency. Aides hope she will create a sharp contrast with Trump on abortion rights and the economy.

Harris aides are also planning for the Trump attacks on the liberal positions she endorsed in the 2020 Democratic primary. While her campaign has signaled she has abandoned many of those policy preferences, Harris herself has not always publicly stated as much, instead putting out statements through anonymous aides.

Harris’s debate prep has been led by Karen Dunn, a veteran Washington lawyer who coached her for her 2020 vice presidential debate, and Rohini Kosoglu, a longtime policy adviser. In addition, the prep sessions have featured Harris’s White House chief of staff, Lorraine Voles, and her campaign chief of staff, Sheila Nix.

Also on hand have been Tony West, Harris’s brother-in-law; Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair; David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the campaign; Brian Fallon and Kirsten Allen, her two top communications aides; Sean Clegg, a longtime political adviser dating to her California days; Minyon Moore, a longtime Harris ally who chaired the Democratic convention in Chicago; and Cedric L. Richmond, a former congressman and top White House staffer.

Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, was initially enlisted to play Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) when Harris was preparing to face him in the vice presidential debate. Now that Harris has ascended to the top of the ticket and will face Trump, Reines has stayed on to play the former president, reprising the role he played for Clinton during her 2016 debate preparations.

After the debate, the Trump campaign is planning to bring more than two dozen allies to the spin room, including Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended his independent bid for president and endorsed Trump, people familiar the plans said. There are also discussions about bringing Vance to the spin room.

Harris’s campaign is planning to have California Gov. Gavin Newsom appear in the spin room, the same role he played for Biden after the June debate.