Preparing for debates?

Trump: I'm not preparing for debates yet

By Nick Gass

Donald Trump "will have a lot of things mastered" by the time the first debate rolls around on Sept. 26, the presumptive Republican nominee assured conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.

During a 23-minute interview, Hewitt, who has had his own complicated history with Trump throughout the election cycle, offered multiple suggestions and questions and asked him if he has begun preparing for the first event in Dayton, Ohio, with mock debates.

“I have not," Trump said. "No, I have not. And I must tell you, I think you and I have a little different mode. I watched [Mitt] Romney went into a log cabin or something and he came out and he wouldn’t talk to anybody for weeks, you know, and all of that, and then he got to the debates and he wasn’t able to speak so well. I’ve seen that, and to a certain extent, you have to be yourself. I do know the issues, I think much better than people understand that I know the issues. But I want to, obviously I will be practicing. But I don’t want to put so much practice in that all of a sudden you’re not who you are. Does that make sense to you?”

Hewitt said that it did, noting that Clinton would hit Trump on his flubbing of the nuclear triad in a past debate, the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, the number of aircraft carriers and his knowledge of the chain of command, what the conservative pundit called the "knockout punch."

“I know the chain of command, and I will have a lot of things mastered. You know, as I’ve told you, I’ve been a very successful businessman, [but] I’ve never done this," Trump said. "When they asked about NATO as an example, I was asked by Wolf Blitzer, you know, just off the cuff, you know, tell me about NATO on live television."

After he gave his answer about how other NATO countries are not paying their fair share, "everybody laughed," Trump recalled, "and then three days later, they started saying, you know Trump is 100 percent right.”

“She’s gonna try and gotcha. That’s what she’s going to do," Hewitt said.

Trump responded, “I have plenty of gotcha for her, too, if she plays that card."

After Hewitt praised Trump for his speech hitting Clinton on Wednesday, Trump called it "very unfair that she's even allowed participate in this election" with the FBI investigation into the setup of her private server still ongoing.

“I may do a separate speech on it," Trump said. "In fact, you send me whatever material you have, because I have a lot. But if you have any information you have on that send it to me, Hugh. Because I may just do a separate speech on that. You know, I got very high marks on that yesterday, I got high marks yesterday from people that truly, truly hate me."