Don’t Get Rope-a-Doped by Trump

Former colleagues, allies—and even one foe—of Kamala Harris are all urging the former prosecutor to follow one rule on Tuesday if she wants to nail Donald Trump: Stick to your arguments, but make no rebuttals.

When she and Trump take the stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night for their 90-minute make-or-break showdown just 56 days out from Election Day, they say Harris should simply let Trump’s Trumpisms fall away and melt.

“Trump will say things that are not true,” a Harris ally familiar with her style told the Daily Beast. “She should not respond to those things. She should stay on the game plan she has.”

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, to which Harris belonged when she was the junior senator from California, agreed.

“Never argue with a fool because then you will be made a fool,” Scott said in a telephone interview with the Beast, paraphrasing (perhaps) the apocryphal Mark Twain. A fellow lawyer, he conceded that’s tough advice to follow in practice, in the heat of the moment during a debate against a man who doesn’t always follow decorum protocols “with the same level of dignity” as others.

“That’s why she wanted the microphones on” the whole time during the debate, Scott suggested, “so if he embarrasses himself” everyone will hear. The Harris campaign also argued to debate host ABC News that mics being muted when a candidate isn’t speaking will “serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President.”

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A strategy of not rebutting Trump’s off-topic jabs may also serve to keep the spotlight focused squarely on the cognitive fitness of the 78-year-old GOP nominee, whose campaign speeches have at times morphed into rambling, incoherent rants. Last week he gave an incomprehensible answer to a simple question about whether he supports childcare legislation during a speech to the Economic Club of New York.

Even Trump’s former debate prep tutor, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had advice for Harris, 59 on how to beat Trump in the debate: Don’t fall into the former president’s traps the way Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

“Charm and disarm,” he told ABC News. “That’s it.”

“That’s what will get under his skin,” Christie, who switched from Trump fan to full-throttled critic, said, “if she refuses to engage him in that back-and-forth, which Hillary failed at miserably.” He said engaging will only increase Trump’s stature. “You want to decrease his stature by being dismissive of him.”

Then there’s the question of what the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee should do if Trump flies off the handle or starts stage-stalking Harris the way he did Hillary Clinton during their 2016 debate at the University of Washington in St. Louis. Harris will be able to handle oddities like that, the Harris ally predicted.

“She’ll look at him like he’s lost his mind,” he said laughingly, “in that way that women do.” (Clinton wound up foreshadowing a theme of the 2024 Harris campaign when she called Trump’s stage prowling “really weird” afterward in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres.) “The worst thing she can do is to make it a point-counterpoint about policy,” he added.

Sen. Cory Booker’s advice to his former colleague? Listen to your debate prep tutor.

“Karen Dunn, who’s been her main person, is phenomenal. She was my debate prep person for my Senate and my presidential days,” Booker told the Daily Beast in the Capitol on Monday as lawmakers gathered for the first time since Harris became the Democratic Party’s official nominee for president.

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Democrats, however, are suffering a collective anxiety attack, with their August exuberance over the party’s top-of-ticket switch from Joe Biden to Harris now dampened by Harris’ stagnation in the polls. Biden was the last candidate to debate Trump, an epic disaster that exposed the president’s frailty and led to the intraparty coup that toppled him and gave way to the first Black and first Asian-American woman to become a major party’s candidate.

Seemingly unfazed by the poll numbers, Booker predicted, “She’s gonna do exceptionally well.”