Kamala Harris is camped out at a Pittsburgh hotel. Donald Trump is being peppered informally by aides. Both sides share the same belief about why the debate is so crucial.
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Aides to both Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris see Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia as a crucial moment to define Ms. Harris for millions of swing voters who know what they think about Mr. Trump but are still curious about her.
Vice President Kamala Harris is holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel, doing highly choreographed debate practice sessions ahead of Tuesday night’s clash. There’s a stage and replica TV lighting and an adviser in full Lee Strasberg method-acting mode, not just playing Donald J. Trump but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and a long tie.
The former president’s preparations are more improv. They are pointedly called not “debate prep” but “policy time,” meant to refresh him on his record. Nobody is playing Ms. Harris; sometimes his aides sit at a long table opposite him and bat questions back and forth, or other times he pulls up a chair closer to them. Mr. Trump has held just a handful of sessions so far, interrupting one at his Las Vegas hotel so he and his advisers could go up to his suite to watch Ms. Harris’s convention speech.
While the two camps’ preparations for the big night in Philadelphia could not be more different, both sides view the debate the same way, according to interviews with nearly two dozen people close to the candidates, many of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss the private preparations. The Harris and Trump teams see it as a crucial moment to define Ms. Harris for millions of swing voters who know what they think about Mr. Trump but are still curious about her.
Bringing out Mr. Trump’s most self-destructive instincts is a priority for Ms. Harris, as is coming across as coolheaded and presidential.
“She should not be baited, she should bait him,” Hillary Clinton, the last woman to debate Mr. Trump, said in an interview on Thursday. “When I said he was a Russian puppet, he just sputtered onstage. I think that’s an example of how you get out a fact about him that really unnerves him.”
In Mr. Trump’s debate prep sessions, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has embraced the role of posing tough questions to Mr. Trump, including on uncomfortable subjects like his criminal convictions, according to a person with knowledge of the gatherings. Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who memorably attacked Ms. Harris in a 2019 presidential primary debate, has also been helping Mr. Trump prepare.
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