Philippe Reines on the Trump-Biden Debate: They Never See Each Other and They Really Don’t Like Each Other

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
WITT: “Joining me now, deputy assistant secretary of state and spokesperson for Hillary Clinton. He played Donald Trump during Hillary Clinton’s debate rehearsals. Good to see you again, felipe. Let’s talk about debate. It is usually shrouded in secrecy, all the prep. But we know the president is surrounded by multiple advisers, some of whom you know very well. Describe what you think is going on in that room in camp David this weekend, and how do you expect Biden is preparing for Thursday’s debate?”

REINES: “Well, I will start with the clip you just showed. Because they are starting from a point of saying exactly what vice president Harris said, that it is a contrast and she laid out the argument perfectly. It is being led, the debate camp at camp David, by someone that is probably the best at this, the president’s first chief of staff. He has done this for Biden in the past, for Hillary Clinton, for President Obama. The other hand for this, there is someone there who, while Kamala Harris, imagine if while she was speaking miko is just yelling at her, every couple of seconds saying that is not true, what are you talking about, I didn’t say that. I didn’t do that. That is the challenge here. Now, obviously there are some technical formatting differences to try to mitigate that. But I think the easiest way to think about what is going on at camp David is mostly conversations between the president and his advisers, where, probably a fair amount of do I really have to do this, why do I have to do this, can I get out of doing this. You have to remember, it has been 1400 days since these two men have been in the same place. We talk about them all the time as if they spend day in and day out on the campaign trail together. They have not. They never see each other and they really don’t like each other. There’s a certain amount of grounding that has to take place, where you come out and you have to remember, there are 90 million people watching, or 100 million, or 70, whatever it is. There will be no bigger audience between now and Election Day. That means you have the opportunity to say to the American people what you are trying to say every day of the week, but to the largest audience ever. You are trying to do what Kamala Harris said. You are trying to say hey, look at me. This is what I want to do. Look at him, this is what he did. That’s interesting, because this is the first time in 134 years we have had two guys that have served back to back. So it is not a hypothetical about if this guy is president. It is remember when that guy was president, this is what happened. And when I am president now, this is what’s happening. A very different dynamic. But the very basic idea is you are going through scenarios, whether it is talking or whether it is at the podium, with, I believe, Bob Bauer, one of the president’s advisers who is pretending to be Donald Trump. And it is not an snl skit, it is more serious event. What you want the president or, in my case, Hillary, to get used to standing next to this roman candle of anger that is going off around you while trying to keep your head, and speaking to the camera, to people. It’s very hard.”