'Panic behind the scenes' is leading Trump's team to bash debate moderators: CNN reporter

CNN reporter Alayna Treene on Wednesday said that there was a whiff of panic behind the Trump campaign's decision to go after Jake Tapper, who will be hosting this week's presidential debate.

In discussing Trump's preparations for the debate, Treene said that the campaign has been begging Trump to make the debate about issues rather than the kinds of personal grievances that typically fill up a campaign rally speech.

However, Treene has also picked up on some unease going on among Trump's campaign that he will not heed this advice.

"As for the panic that's kind of happening behind the scenes, it's been interesting because for months we've heard the Trump campaign say we will debate anywhere, anytime, any place," she said. "We're really hearing them sing a different tune over the last week. Part of that is they do want to manage expectations... when they learned that Joe Biden and his campaign were going to be spending a full week at Camp David preparing for this, that was kind of the turning point where they realized they do need to go on offense more to try to raise the expectation."

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She also said that the Trump campaign seems to have realized that it would need to set up excuses should their candidate perform poorly at the debate.

"The pre-spin we're seeing with them: Rather than working the refs, attacking the refs and the moderators and already trying to frame this debate as being rigged," she said. "It's something that's exactly out of Donald Trump's well worn playbook. He's done it with the election, he's done it with the courtroom, he's done it on the campaign trail, saying something is rigged and it's an insurance policy depending on how he does on the debate stage."

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