Trump allies fear he’ll blow the debate — his best chance to regain ground on Harris

Tuesday’s debate may be former U.S. President Donald Trump’s best chance to regain his footing in the presidential race.

But it’s an opportunity some Republicans fear he could blow — particularly if Trump gets personal with Vice President Kamala Harris. Prominent GOP officials and his own advisers have urged Trump for weeks to keep the focus on critiquing her policy record, but the former president continues to signal that he’s not interested in backing down from personal attacks.

“I assume she’ll come in very, very aggressive, and she will try to bait him, getting very angry, and she’ll be personal and try to demean him,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “I think, I hope, what he’ll do is be a guy who’s been a real president — while she has been kind of a semi-vice president — and a guy who knows all the world leaders, and a guy who has been through an enormous amount, and just be calm and steady and stick to the real differences.”

For allies of the famously unscripted and bombastic former president, that’s a hope that has some literally invoking a higher power.

“I think — I pray — he can be disciplined,” said Tricia McLaughlin, one of several Republican strategists who voiced concerns about Trump’s ability to keep from personal attacks.

But, she admitted, that may not be the case. “If Trump feels like he’s backed into a corner and feels like it’s three on one, that could be a problem,” McLaughlin said, pointing out that Trump could lash out if he feels ganged-up on by Harris and the debate’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC.

McLaughlin, who was a senior adviser on Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, has reason to be unsure how Trump will react. Trump has already sought to cast doubt on ABC’s impartiality, calling the network “dishonest” and the “worst network in terms of fairness.”

And he does not appear to share allies’ concerns about refraining from personal insults. When Trump recently was urged by podcaster Lex Fridman to talk about “a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side,” the former president seemed to disagree.

“Yeah, I think you have to criticize though,” Trump said in the episode released Tuesday. “I think they’re nasty.”

Previously, Trump has said he is “entitled to personal attacks” on Harris, after he was widely criticized for questioning her racial identity.

It’s a strategy Republicans in recent days have been warning Trump against. Earlier this week, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “Every day that the candidates trade insults is a good day for [Harris] because it’s one less day that she has to defend the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.”

“Far more worthwhile for Mr. Trump is his record of success,” Graham continued. “The road to the White House runs through a vigorous policy debate, not an exchange of barbs.”

Rep. Don Bacon, the Nebraska Republican who represents a potentially critical Electoral College district in Omaha, told CNN that Trump talking about “DEI, race, coming up with nicknames — that doesn’t play well in this district. They want to talk about the issues. This is an issue district.”

Those assisting Trump with debate preparation include Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Trump’s advisers Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles and Jason Miller, according to a Trump ally.

A Trump campaign official, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the former president, as he did before the June debate, is working with senior staff and allies to determine how to best portray a contrast with Harris during the debate. But the official suggested preparations are minimal. Trump is “simply reviewing policy specifics” that he believes voters will most care about, the official said, in order to contrast his time in office to “Kamala Harris’ four years as co-pilot.”

“President Trump does unscripted interviews with a variety of outlets, including new media outlets online, he gives unscripted hour-plus press conferences, he gives speeches that include a lot of material, extemporaneously,” the official said. “The idea that he has to ‘prepare for a debate’ is absurd.”

The campaign official declined to comment on whether Trump’s advisers, ahead of the debate, are pushing him to avoid personal attacks on Tuesday night. Trump himself joked at a rally in North Carolina last month that he should “fire” his advisers who had told him to steer clear of personal insults against Harris.

“Most voters have a locked-in view of Trump, so it’s not like his performance will radically change views. He just needs to not be overly aggressive and create a permission structure for swing voters fed up with the economy and the border to vote for him,” said a close ally of Trump, granted anonymity to discuss strategy. “The debate is far more consequential for Kamala Harris because voters don’t have a solidified view of her yet.”

Ryan Williams, a GOP consultant and former aide to Mitt Romney, said Trump should focus on “not appearing unhinged” as he works to portray Harris as too liberal.

“This is the last real inflection point that we know about. After this, there’s not really a big moment” to change the trajectory of the race, Williams said.

Trump would likely benefit from following his own model in the debate against Biden. After spending months mocking Biden’s cognitive and physical condition, as Biden froze and repeatedly appeared confused on stage during the June debate, Trump largely kept his attacks focused on Biden’s policies.

But Harris is almost certain to be a more difficult opponent. Gingrich noted “how ruthless she was with [Brett] Kavanaugh when she was a senator.”

“She can be aggressive,” Gingrich said. “She can be tough.”

That’s the view of Republicans who know her from her time in California, too. Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in California who was an adviser for Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, said, “Harris will want to make personality the issue, which is hard for him to resist, but it will be a bad night for him if he falls back on hurling absurd insults at Harris.”

“She can deliver a set piece in a debate,” said Stutzman, who said he will likely write in a name for president. “Will he be able to resist taking the bait? Doubt it. He’ll more likely be like a lab rat hitting the cocaine pan instead of the food pan.”

Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Trump, maintained that viewers tuning in are already deeply familiar with him.

“There’s no unplowed ground when it comes to Donald Trump,” Conway said. “It’s all been said and done. Kamala repeating the same shopworn soundbites will make her seem like a cable news pundit, not a commander in chief. America is still getting to know her, and while that’s helped her in the short term, it’s a risk for her in the long run.”

Brett Doster, a Republican political consultant in Florida who worked on Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Trump should “stay away from making attacks personal” and instead hit her purely on issues like the border and economics.

“To be most potent, Trump could reel off a string of statements Harris said then versus now to show her untrustworthy on these issues,” Doster said. “But to do that, he has to get out of his shoot-from-the-hip comfort zone and prepare.”

Trump, in an interview on a New Hampshire radio program this past week, boasted that he has “been preparing all my life for this debate.”

“I have meetings on it, we talk about it. But there’s not a lot you can do” to prepare, Trump said. “Either you know your subject or not, either have good policy or not. She’s changed every policy.”

There is precedent for Republicans concerned about Trump’s demeanor in debates. Following his first debate with Biden in 2020, even allies of the former president acknowledged his heckling and frequent interruptions of Biden may have damaged Trump. In contrast, his recognition in this year’s first debate that Biden was imploding — and his relative restraint in that matchup — worked to his advantage.

But the Harris debate will be new terrain for Trump. Not only is he facing a new opponent, but he is coming into the debate in an uncomfortably tight position in battleground state polls.

Alex Conant, who served as communications director on Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, noted that “given the unprecedented nature of Harris’ ascendancy,” Trump is in the unfamiliar territory of not being the main draw for viewers tuning in for Tuesday’s debate.

“Trump is used to being the star. Now for the first time, he has to share the stage with another politician generating huge crowds,” Conant said. “I suspect he won’t be comfortable with that. What will he do to reclaim the spotlight and regain momentum?”