Trump’s debate challenge centers on avoiding ‘personal nonsense’

Former President Trump’s advisers and allies argue he enters next week’s debate against Vice President Harris with several advantages going for him. 

He is a more seasoned debater, particularly on the national stage. It’s Harris who has to introduce herself and her policies to a large swath of the public. And polls show Trump with an advantage on key issues like the economy and immigration.

The question, as is often the case with Trump, is whether he can keep his cool against a younger opponent who is a former prosecutor and a woman of color. His appearances on the campaign trail, where he has insulted Harris’s intelligence, questioned her racial identity and mocked her laugh, suggest it won’t be easy.

“He just needs to be clear about what she and the administration have done and remind people about the things that they feel like he did better,” said one Republican who has worked with Trump. “If he gets into personal nonsense, obviously that will hurt him, and that will be an opportunity for her to play the victim and be snappy and witty.”

But the former president also has significant experience to fall back on. He debated then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton three times in 2016, and he debated President Biden twice in 2020 and again in June, preceding his exit from the 2024 race.

Trump has frequently drawn criticism and poor reviews from voters when he has been overly aggressive, frequently interrupting his opponent and moderators. And he went viral in 2016 during a town hall style debate with Clinton when he followed her around the stage as she spoke.

Strategists said Trump will be in position to be on offense against Harris on immigration, on inflation and on the Biden administration’s foreign policy, specifically its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“What Trump's goal will be is to get her into word salad, rambling answers that don't make any sense,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based GOP consultant who has been critical of the former president.

Trump has spurned traditional debate preparation throughout his political career, and that is still the case ahead of Tuesday’s showdown with Harris. 

While the vice president has been holed up in Pennsylvania for days preparing for the debate, Trump held a series of campaign events last week and has been meeting with advisers and allies to go over policy topics and potential lines of attack Harris might use.

Among those huddling with Trump is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), who memorably sparred with Harris on the debate stage during the 2019 Democratic primary. Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 and has endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.

“You have to be real. You know, you can't cram knowledge into your head for, you know, 30 years of knowledge in one week,” Trump said in late August when asked how he’s preparing. “So, you know, there's a little debate prep, but I've always done it more or less the same way. You have to know your subject. And I think I know my subject.”

Trump’s advisers are aware that Harris will likely try to get under his skin. 

The vice president in her stump speech regularly tells supporters she knows “Trump’s type,” citing her time as a prosecutor and his numerous legal issues. Democrats’ efforts to brand Trump as “weird” have clearly touched a nerve, as he’s brought it up on his own at multiple events.

Trump has also shown he may have a hard time restraining himself. He has repeatedly dismissed the idea that he should focus more on policy than on personal attacks, and he has spent the days leading up to Tuesday’s debate hammering the host network, ABC News, as unfair and biased against him

Harris’s campaign had pushed for microphones to remain on throughout the debate, hoping for a Trump outburst that might remind voters – and women voters in particular – what they don’t like about the former president. Ultimately, the two sides agreed to have the microphones muted when a candidate is not recognized to speak.

“He knows when he’s trying to be set up for a trap,” said the Republican who has worked with Trump. “And I think you’ll see at least out of the gate a really strong punch on the failures of the last three and a half years, and a settling into real policy conversations and discussions. And the question is, can you hold that?”

Polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill show a neck-and-neck race in each of the seven battleground states likely to decide November’s election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Tuesday’s debate is the only one scheduled between Trump and Harris, though there is a vice presidential debate set for Oct. 1. Harris’s campaign has said it would be open to a second presidential debate in October, but it has left open the possibility that there won’t be another one depending on the state of the race.

That has increased the stakes for both candidates on Tuesday.

“If one of the candidates has a bad night, it will be almost impossible to recover from it,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns.

“If there were three debates scheduled, you could potentially recover from a first bad debate. Clearly Obama in 2012 had a bad first debate but recovered,” he continued. “But I think the other issue is Harris is leading, but remains relatively unknown and frankly untested…I think a lot of voters will be tuning in to see if she’s able to stand up to Trump.”