Tulsi Gabbard and a seasoned Trump impersonator: How Trump and Harris are preparing for their first head-to-head debate

(CNN) — The first presidential debate of 2024 upended the race for the White House, effectively terminated the reelection aspirations of President Joe Biden and perhaps forever altered the direction of the country.

With so much potentially at risk at next month’s debate – which will be the first time former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris encounter each other at close range – the planning for the high-stakes showdown has already begun.

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

After much back and forth, Trump and Harris agreed last week to the September 10 debate previously arranged by the campaigns of Trump and Biden. ABC, the host network, announced Friday it 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 drastically shifted in the weeks since the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden on June 27. The president’s lackluster performance that night shattered the confidence of his party and its donors, who in turn put immense pressure on Biden to drop out of the race. He eventually did on July 21 and endorsed Harris, giving the Democratic Party a new standard bearer and a sorely needed shot in the arm.

Swing state polls and national surveys show a race that has quickly tightened amid surging enthusiasm for Harris within her own party and new consideration from voters once put off by a Biden-Trump rematch.

Trump has struggled to cope with a reality he seems to believe he brought to fruition by beating Biden in their head-to-head showdown.

“I should have been a little bit easier,” Trump said at a news conferenceThursday. “Somebody said, ‘Your debate performance was horrible.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Because you forced him out of government.’“

The race to prepare Harris, who has not stepped onto a debate stage since facing Trump’s former running mate Mike Pence in 2020, is underway and will intensify after the Democratic National Convention next week 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 role playing Trump at the request of the Harris campaign, several people familiar with the planning told CNN.

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

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

Trump, meanwhile, has revived the approach deployed ahead of his June debate with Biden, engaging in less formal policy sessions with close aides, advisers and allies in between campaign appearances and rounds of golf.

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 even briefly considered as a potential running mate.

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

Seen mostly as a gadfly and an oddity during her Democratic primary run in 2019, Gabbard’s attack on Harris’ record as a prosecutor may have been her largest direct impact on the race. Given how much attention was on her attorney general record at the time, Harris had prepared for the attack, and by tracking comments Gabbard was making in interviews, aides to the then-California senator were able to predict not just that Gabbard would be the one to make the attack, but almost the wording of the question. They admitted afterward that they were shocked by just how much Gabbard was able to rattle Harris, and later said that it helped lock Harris into a tailspin her campaign never recovered from.

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

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

Trump has pushed for additional debates and had agreed to two others with Fox News and NBC. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and Harris’ vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, agreed Thursday to an October 1 debate hosted by CBS News. Like Trump, Vance has called on Walz to agree to more, arguing for “as many debates as we possibly can.”

A senior campaign adviser said Harris is open to a second debate, but the details will not be settled until the first debate is in the books.

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

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.

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