Undermine the results

Trump debate playbook: Skip mock debates, fundraise and undermine the results

Allies close to the former president suggest he needs to come across as more disciplined.

By MERIDITH MCGRAW and NATALIE ALLISON

Donald Trump in recent days gave speeches in Washington and Philadelphia and greeted supporters at a cheesesteak restaurant in Pennsylvania. He flew to New Orleans for a fundraiser Monday, and called in to a roundtable with Black leaders on Wednesday in Atlanta.

Ahead of what could be the most consequential political event of the cycle, Trump has continued campaigning and has eschewed intense debate preparations, even as Joe Biden has remained hidden away at Camp David to get ready.

That’s made easier by the fact that he’s already declared the debate is essentially rigged.

Trump and his team have worked to undermine, undercut and cast doubt on the historic debate before it’s started: They’ve questioned the fairness of CNN moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Trump and his allies have criticized the format of the debate. They’ve repeatedly asked President Joe Biden to take a drug test.

It’s a playbook Trump has followed for years, most notably ahead of the 2020 election and his criminal trial this spring in Manhattan. If Trump comes out the winner of the debate, his allies predict, then it will be in spite of the obstacles. If Trump stumbles, then he has already set up who and what to blame. It’s also a brand of grievance politics that has long animated Trump’s most fervent supporters and helped him, baselessly, explain away past political failures and legal setbacks.

Allies close to Trump have both privately and publicly suggested that he needs to come across as more disciplined and far less frenetic than he did during his first faceoff with Biden in 2020, when he constantly interrupted his opponent.

“I think Trump has a very simple job Thursday night,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Which is to stay calm, tell us what his second term will be like, and basically ignore the attacks and brush them off — the way Reagan did when he said to Carter, ‘There you go again.’”

“The last thing I would want him to do is to overtrain and get to the point where he’s trying to remember what a bunch of people told him,” Gingrich said, calling Trump a “great natural performer.”

And Republicans outside Trump’s close circle see the strategy similarly.

“We need to see not the wild man of the rallies, because those people are already for him,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove. “It’s going to be the people who are on the bubble, who want to see if he seems constructive and calm, and a clear idea of what he wants to do.”

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, who ran in the GOP presidential primary in 2012, put it this way: “Trump needs to offer persuadable voters some measure of comfort that he won’t act like a total maniac if he’s elected.”

In the weeks leading up to the debate, Trump, whose team agreed to the terms of the debate, hasn’t held traditional mock debates. But he has attended private policy meetings on issues like immigration and the economy with close outside allies, senators and his core team of advisers, including Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller. He has also peppered subject-matter experts with questions in between finance calls, fundraisers, news interviews and campaign rallies.

But the stakes are incredibly high: polling remains stagnant and the Biden and Trump campaigns are battling for a narrow, undecided slice of the voting population who remains undecided. And the scheduling of the June debate, which is historically early, means this debate will set the narrative for 11 weeks until they are expected to square off again in September.

“I think it’s gonna be the most consequential debate since at least 1980, when a lot of people were undecided going into that debate,” Rove said. “[Reagan] at the end of the day asked the question that was on everybody’s minds: ‘Are we better off than we were four years ago? And are we as respected as we were four years ago?’ And the answer then was no.”

Trump has signaled he plans to attack Biden on the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the economy, and the southern border — all familiar refrains from his campaign. While both campaigns have booked ad time Thursday in key battleground states, the Biden team has invested significantly more in doing so — as it has with ads throughout the election — reserving more than $2 million worth of ads Thursday, according to AdImpact. Trump, meanwhile, has booked just $100,000 in ads in swing states during the debate.

Trump’s team found other ways to distract from the debate. On Wednesday, LaCivita tweeted that he was flying down to Trump campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, and teased that he may have had a special guest, leading some to speculate it was Trump’s vice presidential pick. Trump in recent days has continued to offer mixed information about his running mate pick, at one point saying he had decided and that the person would be at the debate, while later suggesting the decision was still in the works.

Some of the names on his shortlist — including Sens. J.D. Vance, Tim Scott and Marco Rubio, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — are among the guests at a fundraiser and watch party in Atlanta on Thursday night, and some of Trump’s potential running mate picks are expected to be in the spin room afterward.

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, a top GOP donor who is hosting the fundraiser during the debate, told POLITICO that several news events playing out in Georgia — the killing of nursing student Laken Riley by an undocumented migrant, and the scandal surrounding Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose own ethics are in question as she tries to prosecute Trump — have only fueled distaste for Biden.

“The America First vision for a bright future won’t just win him the debate, it is resonating with voters from all walks of life, and can win President Trump the election,” Loeffler said.

The day after the debate, Trump is holding a rally with Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, where he is expected to discuss the debate and spin how he thought it went, according to a person with knowledge of Trump’s plans.

In a pre-debate briefing call with reporters on Tuesday, top Trump campaign advisers criticized past media coverage of Biden during live events. Trump’s communications adviser Jason Miller said “many in the media are already prepared to give Joe Biden a participation trophy if he can simply stand upright for 90 minutes.” Miller then read off headlines from 2008 to now that he argued were sympathetic toward Biden.

And the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation held a press call of their own Tuesday, “sounding the alarm” that Democrats may try to replace Biden on the ticket after the debate. Mike Howell, director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, argued that a “freezing moment” on the debate stage would prompt Democrats to move to replace Biden, and asserted, without evidence, that the public believes Biden has “continence issues.”

Howell said Heritage is preparing to mount legal challenges if proper procedures aren’t followed state by state for replacing a nominee on the ballot.

And if Biden does perform significantly better than expected?

“I think Biden can get a 48- to 72-hour bump at best, and then people will go to the grocery store and they’ll watch the news and they’ll remember why they’re mad,” Gingrich said.

Biden “has more to gain or lose in this debate,” Pawlenty said, given his polling disadvantage and that he is “playing defense on too many vote-driving issues,” like immigration, inflation and crime.

Loyal Trump supporters have been adamant that press coverage of Biden’s public appearances has been too lax — despite alternating between suggesting that Biden is incapable of performing well in public, to arguing that he has game.

“There is some sort of level expectation if Joe Biden fogs a mirror that he’s doing OK,” said David Urban, a past adviser to Trump’s campaigns. “If Biden doesn’t F-up then Democrats will count it as a victory … like ‘Biden fogs mirror, you know, ready to be president again.’”