See how Trump and Kamala are preparing for the debate

The first presidential debate of 2024 altered the race for the White House, put an end to President Joe Biden’s re-election dream and perhaps forever changed the course of the United States.

With so much at stake in next month’s debate — which will be the first time former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris meet up close — planning for the showdown has already begun.

Harris held her first formal debate training session earlier this week at Howard University, the historically Black college in Washington, D.C., that she attended nearly four decades ago, and is working closely with a seasoned Trump surrogate. Trump, however, has recruited one of the vice president’s former rivals to help with preparations: Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 in a crowded field that also included Kamala Harris.

After much back-and-forth, Trump and Harris agreed last week to the September 10 debate previously organized by the Trump and Biden campaigns. ABC, the host network, announced Friday (16) that the matchup will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

The political landscape in the United States and the fortunes of the country’s two major parties have changed dramatically in the weeks since the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden on June 27. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and endorsed Harris, giving the Democratic Party a new representative and a much-needed fresh start.

State and national polls show a race that has tightened quickly amid growing enthusiasm for Harris within her own party and new consideration among voters previously turned off by a Biden-Trump rematch.

Trump has struggled to come to terms with a reality he believes he created by defeating Biden in a head-to-head confrontation.

“I should have been a little softer,” Trump said at a news conference Thursday (15). “Someone said, ‘Your debate performance was horrible.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Because you forced him out of office.’”

The race to prepare Harris, who has not taken the debate stage since facing off against Trump’s former running mate Mike Pence in 2020, is underway and will intensify after next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

A team of Democratic advisers joined Harris at Howard earlier this week, including Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton who is reprising his Trump role at the request of the Harris campaign, they told CNN several people familiar with the planning.

Karen Dunn, another longtime Clinton adviser who helped Kamal Harris prepare for his 2020 vice presidential debate, is also involved in the preparation efforts, sources said. Former Harris aides Rohini Kosoglu and Sean Clegg are also involved in the effort, according to a person familiar with the preparations.

The Washington Post was the first to report on the debate preparations involving Reines. The New York Times first reported on the involvement of Kosoglu and Clegg.

Trump, meanwhile, has resumed the approach implemented before his debate with Biden, engaging in less formal policy sessions with close aides, advisers and allies in between campaign appearances and golf outings.

Gabbard’s involvement, first reported Friday by the New York Times, was confirmed to CNN by Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, has found a home in Trump’s orbit and was briefly considered a potential running mate.

Trump’s interest in Gabbard as he prepares to face Harris next month stems in part from exchanges the former congresswoman had with the vice president during the 2020 race. Harris, in one debate, criticized Gabbard for her views on foreign policy, while Gabbard, in another debate, challenged Harris’s record on criminal justice.

Gabbard’s attack on Harris’s record as a prosecutor may have had the biggest direct impact on the 2019 Democratic primary race. With the attention being paid to her attorney general record at the time, Harris had been bracing for the attack, and by tracking comments Gabbard was making in interviews, the then-California senator’s aides were able to predict not only that Gabbard would be the one to make the attack, but almost the wording of the question.

They later admitted they were shocked by how much Gabbard was able to shake Kamala, and later said it helped trap Harris in a crisis from which her campaign never recovered.

As he prepared to face Biden, Trump invited several of the Republicans he considered his running mates to discuss issues and possible talking points. Gabbard now joins that mix.

The former president “does not need traditional debate preparation, but will continue to meet with respected political advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage,” Leavitt said.

Trump has pushed for additional debates and agreed to two more with Fox News and NBC. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and Harris’s vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, agreed on Thursday (15) to an Oct. 1 debate hosted by CBS News. Like Trump, Vance urged Walz to agree to more, advocating “as many debates as possible.”

A senior campaign adviser said Kamala is open to a second debate, but details won’t be worked out until after the first debate is complete.

Publicly, however, the campaign has said otherwise. In a statement released Thursday, Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said, “The debate about debates is over.”

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