Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are fine-tuning their approaches to Tuesday night’s presidential debate, which could have massive consequences for the presidential race.
Their respective advisors are hoping they can embody specific molds on Tuesday, according to the New York Times: Harris as collected and presidential, and Trump as “happy” rather than vindictive, focusing on policy-based issues rather than personal attacks.
Trump is facing high pressure for this debate given Harris’s rise in the polls since her takeover as Democratic nominee. The Republican candidate played an indirect role in forcing out President Joe Biden from the Democratic nominee position given his success in their June 27 debate.
Advisers to Trump want him to press Harris on the issues voters care about: the economy, immigration, public safety, and foreign policy. In an ideal world for Republicans, Trump would make Harris own the last four years of Biden’s presidency, during which inflation ran rampant.
“You can’t ‘turn the page’ when you’re singularly responsible for the current economic and border nightmare our country is living through,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told the outlet.
Trump hopes to produce a signature moment, such as former President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 debate against former President Jimmy Carter in which he asked voters if they were better off than they were before Carter took office. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard have helped Trump prepare.
As for Harris, she hopes to bait Trump into acting unhinged, which could lead him to engage in the personal attacks that his advisers want him to avoid. Former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said that “she should not be baited. She should bait him.”
“When I said he was a Russian puppet, he just sputtered onstage,” she said. “I think that’s an example of how you get out a fact about him that really unnerves him.”
Ultimately, most analysts agree the debate is more about Harris. Voters are well aware of who Trump is, but Harris’s role as vice president has cast her in the shadow of Biden and his policies, and now that she’s the Democratic nominee, many of her presidential policies are unknown.
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Harris is hoping to define herself on the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and Trump is hoping to do it for her.
Tuesday night’s presidential debate will be hosted by ABC News’s David Muir and Linsey Davis.