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00:00Ketavan Ghorchistani is with me here, our international affairs editor.
00:03Ketavan, how on earth have the two men been preparing?
00:06Very different, two men, man and woman been preparing.
00:08Very different, isn't it?
00:10Very, very different.
00:12For Kamala Harris, it's the traditional preparation.
00:15She's been doing that for more than a week now.
00:18Highly choreographed sort of mock debate preparation
00:23with a mock stage, with TV lights,
00:26just to really get into the situation of a debate.
00:29She even has an advisor playing Donald Trump
00:32down to the boxy suit and the long tie.
00:34So really to have someone that looks a little bit like Donald Trump,
00:38the same man who actually was playing Donald Trump back in 2016
00:44when Hillary Clinton was preparing for her debate.
00:48The advisors, they're really trying to prepare Kamala Harris.
00:53And Hillary Clinton had a very clear summary
00:57of what Kamala Harris needs to do.
00:59She should not be baited.
01:00She should bait him.
01:02So that is how they're really trying to prepare
01:04to get her to get under Donald Trump's skin.
01:08For Donald Trump, it's also clear.
01:11The message is that he does not do debate preps.
01:14They don't even call it debate prep.
01:16They call it policy time.
01:18That's how they've presented it.
01:21They had a handful of these policy times,
01:23basically a few advisors gathering with Donald Trump
01:27for a couple of hours at a time
01:29and talking about policy,
01:30trying to give him a refresher on the policy issues
01:34that they want him to talk about.
01:36But it seemed to be, according to several reports,
01:40that he is actually preparing a little bit more
01:42than he did back in 2016 and 2020.
01:45He has a representative, Matt Gaetz,
01:47who's playing the guy asking the tough questions
01:51to get him to answer those tough questions.
01:53And he has Tulsi Gabbard.
01:55She was a Democrat-turned-Trump supporter,
01:57and she debated Vice President Kamala Harris
02:01back in 2019 during the Democratic primary,
02:03and she attacked her pretty well.
02:05So she is helping Donald Trump.
02:07And of course, Donald Trump's main preparation
02:09for any real big political event
02:12is to say that the rules are rigged against him.
02:15That's how he has done in the past.
02:18He's saying that ABC is going to rig the rules against him,
02:20that they're playing for the Democrats,
02:22so that if he seems to be winning the debate,
02:25it will make that win even better.
02:27And if he doesn't do very well, he'll just say,
02:30well, these odds were already stacked against me.
02:33Who's got the most to gain?
02:34Who's got the most to lose, do you think?
02:35That clearly is Kamala Harris.
02:38She has the most to gain,
02:39simply because people don't know her as well
02:43as they do Donald Trump.
02:44A recent poll showed that 90% of voters
02:48say that they know everything they need to know
02:51about Donald Trump to make their decision.
02:53Barely 70% say the same thing about Kamala Harris.
02:56So she has that extra 20% of people
02:59that maybe she could convince during that debate.
03:03She hasn't really been on the campaign trail for that long,
03:07even if she is the vice president.
03:08And she's also only done a couple of these big debates,
03:12the Democratic primary back in 2020,
03:15and the vice presidential debate against Mike Pence.
03:18And both times she did pretty well.
03:20Some of her most memorable lines were against Joe Biden,
03:24who was running against her,
03:27and against Mike Pence.
03:28But with the possibility of a lot of gain
03:31comes a lot of risk also.
03:34She's going to have to defense some of her policy switches.
03:38At the same time, she's going to have to sort of lay out
03:41her vision for the United States.
03:43And as I said earlier,
03:45she's going to have to try to get under Donald Trump's skin,
03:48throw him off his game.
03:50For Trump, the biggest challenge is going to be
03:52stay on message.
03:54That's what the Republicans have been telling him
03:56to do.
03:57Lindsey Graham wrote an op-ed saying
03:59he should focus on policy, not on barbs.
04:03That is going to be the trick for him.
04:05He hasn't been doing great about that in recent weeks.
04:09He called her stupid.
04:10He called her incompetent, questioned her race,
04:13questioned her gender.
04:15He knows that his base loves it,
04:17but the problem is that it could sort of throw off
04:21the independents, the moderate Republican,
04:24especially the women in those groups.
04:27And he has a big gap to fill with women voters
04:31against Kamala Harris,
04:32who leads him by about 14 points
04:35when it comes to female voters.
04:36It's going to be fascinating to see
04:38what topics come up as well
04:39and whether they're really going to get into
04:41a nitty gritty policy discussion
04:43between the two of them, isn't it?
04:44Absolutely.
04:45And that will be again,
04:47whether Kamala Harris manages to get on the policy
04:50and whether Donald Trump sticks to policy.
04:53If he does, there are basically three words
04:56for Donald Trump.
04:57The economy, immigration, crime.
04:59These are the three issues that Republicans believe
05:02they have an advantage over Democrats on.
05:05So he's going to try to sort of tie her
05:08to some of the failed policies of Joe Biden,
05:12while at the same time doing what he's done
05:15in the past couple of weeks,
05:16which is say basically she's going to be Joe Biden,
05:18only she's going to be worse than him
05:21because she's incompetent,
05:23because she is stupid.
05:26For Kamala Harris, there's going to be a mix of substance
05:29and style on substance.
05:31There's one big issue that she knows
05:33is her real weapon, abortion.
05:36She knows that it's a weakness for Republicans
05:39and especially for Donald Trump,
05:40who has himself been wavering
05:42about where really he stands on abortion.
05:45And she's going to have to use those prosecutorial skills
05:49that we've been talking about to, again,
05:52try to throw him off of his game.
05:55That is why her team wanted those microphones
05:58to be on the whole time.
05:59They didn't win on that.
06:01The mics will be off when the candidate is not speaking.
06:04So she's going to have to sort of get him
06:06to show his unruly self
06:09without the help of those open mics.
06:12And it's going to be crucial, this debate,
06:14because, and we have to repeat it multiple times now,
06:17we always talk about election day, November 5th.
06:20Don't forget that millions of Americans
06:23are going to start voting, especially in Pennsylvania.
06:25They're going to start voting on Monday.
06:28And in 24 hours time, we will be here once again,
06:30Ketavan, and me to digest that debate
06:32for you here on France 24.