When Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris walk onstage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia next week, it will be their first in-person encounter — a moment each has been mulling as they prepare with advisers for the high-stakes moment.
For Harris, a stand-in for the former president — wearing his signature red tie — has helped her visualize the scene ahead of time. Trump, meanwhile, has eschewed a sparring partner in the role of Harris, choosing instead to replicate the informal “policy time” that formed his preparation ahead of June’s debate with President Joe Biden.
That debate ended in disaster for the incumbent president, who ended his reelection bid three weeks later and thrust the presidential race into uncharted waters. Sources close to Trump insist not much had changed in terms of how he will prepare for upcoming debate, despite a switch at the top of the Democratic ticket. One difference: the enlisting of one of the vice president’s ex-rivals, Tulsi Gabbard, the former representative from Hawaii who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 in a crowded field that also included Harris.
The addition of Gabbard is particularly notable given the tense exchanges she had with the vice president during their 2020 race that left Harris rattled.
Whether Trump’s approach with a new, younger candidate will prove as effective remains an open question. Harris’ team, for its part, views her as an underdog given Trump’s lengthy experience in general election debates — this will be his seventh in total, more than any candidate in history.
In the week ahead of the Tuesday face-off, Trump has a relatively light campaign schedule and will shuttle between his Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago resorts, as well as Trump Tower in Manhattan, where advisers said he has built in “policy time” on his schedule
Allies have advised Trump to hammer the same issues of inflation and immigration, with a goal of trying to make Harris the incumbent in this race. Many of those close to Trump believe their best bet on winning in November is linking Harris to some of Biden’s more unpopular areas, particularly the economy and immigration, where polls showed Trump held a clear advantage against Biden among voters and where Harris has now closed the gap.
Trump’s team has been sketching out potential responses on reproductive rights with the expectation Harris will make that a focus during the debate.
The Harris and Trump campaigns remain in discussions about the debate rules, according to sources, in particular whether microphones will be muted when a candidate isn’t speaking. The Harris campaign has been pushing for microphones to remain on for the duration of the debate, while the Trump campaign wants them turned off while the other candidate is speaking, in line with the rules at the CNN-hosted debate in June. The Trump campaign has insisted the matter is settled.
Even before Biden dropped out and Harris emerged as the Democratic standard-bearer, the vice president had begun putting together a debate preparation team ahead of her expected showdown with Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Her elevation to Democratic nominee added urgency to the preparations, with a new opponent to game out and the stakes exponentially higher.
Over the past month, Harris has engaged in debate prep sessions with a small team of advisers, led by Rohini Kosoglu, a top policy adviser, and Karen Dunn, a longtime Democratic debate specialist. Others involved in preparation sessions include Harris’ White House chief of staff, Lorraine Voles; her campaign chief of staff, Sheila Nix; and Sean Clegg, a veteran strategist.
The preparations have included mock debate sessions, with the role of Trump played by Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton who stood in for Trump during Clinton’s own debate prep in 2016.
One advantage Harris has benefited from is advice from the only two Democrats to have faced off against Trump on a debate stage: Biden and Clinton. Harris maintains a close relationship with both, and each has offered their counsel since she became the nominee.
Still, even some of Harris’s top supporters have cautioned against overconfidence heading into the showdown. In an interview on CNN this week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said underestimating Trump would be a mistake, pointing to debates the Republican won against Biden and Clinton.
“We shouldn’t be thinking that somehow that Kamala Harris has a greater ability to win a debate than Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re going to come in as significant rivals with very, very different points of view. And I think getting those points of view across and making sure that you’re not getting, you know, flummoxed, frankly, by Donald Trump will be an important thing for Kamala Harris.”
Those around Trump tend to stay away from using the word “preparation” when it comes to the debate. Thus far, no one is expected to sit in for Harris, just as no one played Biden ahead of the June debate.
In some sessions, aides have acted as moderators, but more often than not, these conversations serve as briefings with occasional questioning.
Among those helping with the policy review are senior advisers Jason Miller and Vince Haley, as well as Stephen Miller.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who helped ahead of Trump’s debate with Biden, is also expected to play a role in this round of preparation.
While Trump’s team is hoping to mimic the results of the first debate against Biden, some allies of the former president acknowledge that Harris is a much different debater than the sitting president. Allies also have expressed concern over the tone Trump will strike with Harris, noting that the former president’s often aggressive demeanor may play differently with a woman.
Sources say Harris is keenly aware of the approach Trump may take on the stage.
“She’s very aware of who he is and what he’s going to bring,” one source close to the campaign told CNN, adding: “She has a plan, she has a vision, she’s going to put it forward.”
The race itself has also fundamentally changed. In a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, 46% of likely voters viewed Harris favorably versus 43% unfavorably. Trump’s favorability ratings were a dismal 33% to 58%.
Tuesday’s debate stage will be the closest Harris and Trump will have ever come to each other over the course of their overlapping careers. The only time they’ve previously been in the same room was inside the House chamber during Trump’s State of the Union addresses; Trump skipped the inauguration when Harris was sworn in as vice president.
Depending on how the night goes, it could also be their last. Neither has committed to a second debate.
Coming face-to-face is a moment Harris has been thinking about for several weeks as she scales up her campaign effort and considers the attacks her rival may deploy. As Harris allies brace for personal broadsides from Trump, their message to the Democratic candidate: Don’t get roped in.
“Prepare her for Donald Trump to walk in there hot and prepare to attack and get her off balance,” said Donna Brazile, a close Harris ally who also managed Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, citing the debate between Trump and Clinton in 2016.
“This is a candidate and former president who knows how to command a stage. That’s his strength,” Brazile said. “Don’t try to compete with someone who’s a master.”
Instead, allies like Brazile have underscored the need to stay on message.
“In these environments, there has to be an argument, a thesis, a message they want to communicate about Trump, and then they will use the evidence to prove that. This is where her prosecutorial chops come into play,” one former Harris adviser told CNN.
“Part of the challenge in debate prep is to push her on things that will make her uncomfortable so that she won’t have heard those things for the first time onstage,” the former adviser said, adding that the vice president has become more familiar with personal attacks amid GOP criticism in the last three years.
One of the standout moments that allies often point to is her 2020 debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. Early on in the debate, as Harris rebutted the Trump administration’s assertion that its disastrously slow response to the Covid-19 pandemic was out of a desire to keep Americans calm, Pence tried to cut her off.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Harris said.
Harris intentionally pared back her travel leading up to the upcoming presidential debate to dedicate time to preparation, sources told CNN. She will travel to Pittsburgh on Thursday to prepare with her team, according to two sources familiar with the planning, and will stay for several nights until the debate Tuesday.
It’s the second time the vice president will visit the city this week after campaigning with Biden on Labor Day. She plans to make community stops while she’s in Pittsburgh and stay on the campaign trail in a critical battleground state, according to one of the sources.
It’s a slightly different approach than Biden took ahead of his sole, disastrous debate in June. He retreated to Camp David in Maryland, without any public appearances in the week or so ahead of the debate.
Harris’s approach more resembles then-President Barack Obama, who in 2012 took his “debate camp” to resorts outside Las Vegas and in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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