From shoe lifts to avoiding a ‘Tulsi Gabbard moment’: Inside Harris and Trump’s very different debate prep

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s approaches to debate prep are, it seems, as different as their politics.

While Harris has been hunkering down with a circle of trusted and experienced advisors – with one even donning three-inch shoe lifts and an ill-fitting suit to play Trump – the former president is reportedly “not spending a lot of time” preparing for the September 10 debate on ABC News.

The vice president has not appeared on the debate stage since 2020 when she faced off with then-vice president Mike Pence, where one of the most memorable moments came from the fly that landed on his head for two minutes and subsequently went viral.

This time, in preparation for what will mark the first time the two presidential candidates have ever come face to face, the Democratic contender is being put through her paces by Phillipe Reines, who is reprising his role as Trump as he did for Hillary Clinton back in 2016.

“Before donning the ill-fitting suit I had tailored, my preparation included studying the 11 Republican primary debates in which Trump participated,” Reines revealed in theWashington Post in 2020.

“Watching each three times: once start to finish; then only exchanges involving Trump; and finally only Trump, standing at a lectern in my living room with the sound off to focus entirely on his gestures and body language.”

Last month, Reines was spotted wearing a long tie – but no wig – at Howard University in Washington, where Harris took part in a mock debate at her alma mater, according to The New York Times. 

Besides Reines, Harris’s inner debate prep circle also consists of long-time aide Rohini Kosoglu, Karen Dunn, an attorney who prepared Harris for the 2020 vice presidential debate, and Sean Clegg, who was a lead strategist on her 2020 campaign, according to the Times.

Their tactics are focusing on how she can get underneath Trump’s skin and remain calm when he inevitably goes on the personal attack, a source with knowledge of Harris’s debate prep told NBC News.

Crucially, Harris’s team wants to make sure there is no repeat of the Democratic presidential primary debate in July 2019 where Tulsi Gabbard initiated an attack on the vice president’s prosecutorial record. Gabbard, who has backed Trump and is now advising him ahead of the debate, accused Harris of jailing more than 1,500 people for marijuana offenses when she was a prosecutor in California.

Pointing to her “hypocrisy”, Gabbard said Harris “laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana”.

Harris was not prepared for the attack. “She was rattled. She was on the ropes. And she didn’t have a home or a value proposition to get out of it,” the source told NBC News, adding that “it’s a moment that’s firm in Harris’s mind”.

Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t appear to be sweating too much over his prep following his debate against President Joe Biden in June.

“I’m not spending a lot of time on it,” he told CNN. “I think my whole life I’ve been preparing for a debate.”

The Republican presidential nominee was spotted on the golf course in the days leading up to June’s debate, and his camp has been touting it as “a knockout blow” which culminated in Biden quitting the race.

“President Trump has proven to be one of the best debaters in political history as evidenced by his knockout blow to Joe Biden,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.

She added Trump “does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisors and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage.”

The strategy of the Trump campaign will be going after the vice president’s political stance and policies – or what it claims to be a lack of – on key issues such as the border wall, immigration, fracking and the economy.

Gabbard said of her role in the efforts: “If I can be helpful to president Trump in any way, it really is just in sharing experience that I had with her on that debate stage in 2020, and frankly, helping to point out some ways that Kamala Harris has already shown that she is trying to move away from her record, move away from her positions, and how that contradicts the positions and statements that she is making now that she is the Democratic nominee.”

While the Harris and Trump campaigns continue to row over microphones and other details, with just over a week to go, the countdown to the highly anticipated debate is well and truly on.