Debate night

Team Trump plans debate night offensive

The president’s campaign will be unleashing dozens of supporters on TV in 2020 swing states, blasting out embarrassing moments on social media and dispatching talking points.

By GABBY ORR

As Democrats spar on the debate stage this week, the president’s campaign will be unleashing dozens of Donald Trump backers on the airwaves in 2020 swing states, blasting out any embarrassing moments on social media and dispatching talking points to ensure everyone stays on message.

It’s all part of a robust response Team Trump has rapidly pulled together in recent weeks for the Democrats’ first presidential primary debate, which will stretch over Wednesday and Thursday nights. The strategy includes traditional elements — a rapid-response squad to field reporters’ questions, round-the-clock talking points and a ground force on site in Miami, where the debate is being held — but also a digitally focused war room looking for viral clips. Outside groups that support the president have also built up their own fact-checking resources and made large pre-debate ad buys, hoping to capitalize on the massive cable news audience the two-night primetime event is expected to attract.

It’s a notable change in approach for Trump, who bulldozed through the 2016 presidential campaign as his own messenger, even fighting the Republican Party at times. But now, as the incumbent, Trump has the entire GOP apparatus behind him and a campaign that has been building itself out since the day Trump entered the Oval Office. And while much of the public’s attention will be trained on whatever barbs Trump makes on Twitter during the debates, it’s his 2020 operation that will be doing the heavy lifting to try and knee-cap his potential opponents.

“It is a big night for the Democrats and we will have campaign staff and surrogates watching,” said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, which put together the debate response plan with the Republican National Committee over the last two weeks. “I’m not going to detail our plans, but of course we will be paying attention.”

While Trump will be a captive audience during Wednesday’s debate — he’ll be on a plane to Japan for the G-20 summit — the president is scheduled to be tied up in meetings with foreign leaders when Democrats take the stage on Thursday, putting more pressure on his outside team to handle the immediate response.

Murtaugh and two other senior campaign aides, Kayleigh McEnany and Marc Lotter, will be on the ground in Miami to direct surrogates and do television appearances themselves before and after each debate. Four dozen more surrogates, organized by the RNC, will be stationed in remote TV studios across the U.S. to respond in real time to the high-stakes battles between 20 of the 24 Democratic candidates vying to unseat Trump. Each will be equipped “with talking points and rapid-response materials during the debates,” according to an RNC official.

A majority of the pro-Trump surrogates have been prepped for media appearances in target media markets across 2020 battlegrounds: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. Others have interviews scheduled with Spanish language television and radio stations — part of the campaign’s effort to boost Trump’s performance among Latino voters in 2016.

Back in Washington, D.C., a Trump campaign official said a fully operational war room will spend Wednesday and Thursday night cutting video clips from the debates for the @TrumpWarRoom Twitter account. Their goal is to highlight any perceived gaffes, contradictions, or flip-flops that occur on the debate stage, with bonus points for content that underscores the campaign’s claim that Democrats are more liberal on average than voters think.

“We know what a lot of the Democrats are going to say about several things, but we’ll be ready for the unpredictable as well,” said the Trump campaign official.

Other organizations also plan to use the debates to push out ads and fact sheets portraying the 2020 Democrats as embracing policies Rust Belt voters find unappealing. For instance, the Republican super PAC America Rising announced Monday that it will launch a live blog “to fact check the Democratic candidates, remind you of their records, and share commentary from across social media” during each debate.

And March for Life, an anti-abortion group that maintains close connections to the White House, will run a six-figure ad buy Wednesday on MSNBC, the network hosting both debates this week. The 60-second spot will attempt to show “how out of touch the Democratic Party establishment has become with Democratic voters” on abortion, according to a press release obtained by POLITICO.

The previously unreported ad campaign is aiming to capitalize on the recent Democratic dust-up over comments Biden made earlier this month, when he initially reaffirmed his support for the Hyde amendment, a provision that bars federal Medicaid funds from being used for abortions. The remarks immediately drew criticism from abortion rights advocates, and Biden later reversed his stance, claiming the amendment would need to be repealed in order to promote a federal health care plan that does not limit women’s access to abortions.

The pair of Democratic debates will mark the first major test of Trump campaign’s messaging operation, a moment that has left some officials on edge. Two Republicans close to the reelection effort said the surrogate operation, which is led by Lotter, a former Pence aide, only recently became a serious part of the campaign after months of distributing sporadic talking points that one recipient described as “mediocre at best.” In the last month, however, officials said Lotter has sent twice daily emails containing talking points of noticeably better quality.

But the campaign faces an even greater challenge not knowing what Trump will say, or how he might react to the myriad attack lines he’s likely to witness Wednesday and Thursday night.

Several former and current Trump aides said they would prefer that the president let his campaign steer the news cycle following the debates, but admitted it’s unlikely he will resist weighing in. “Even though Trump is going to be on his way to Japan, that won’t preclude him from live-tweeting it,” said one former Trump aide.

“A lot of it is dependent on what Trump does, even as the campaign tries to do what is traditionally done from a rapid response standpoint,” the aide added.

Trump offered his own assessment of the Democratic field ahead of the debates this week, suggesting the two-night event could attract higher ratings than the 2016 Republican primary debates because “there’s curiosity to see how bad” it goes.

“I’m looking for nothing in that debate. I guess it’s really a big race to who can give away the most and who can raise taxes the most,” he told The Hill.

Most of Trump’s top-polling potential rivals — like Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Kamala Harris — are set to debate Thursday night, when Trump will be mostly indisposed in meetings.

But that hasn’t stopped the president before from pausing to fire off a tweet.