Donald Trump: ‘I Hate My Opponent’

He’s ready to go personal in next month’s debate against Harris. Advisers are urging restraint.

Donald J. Trump at a campaign event at Precision Custom Components on August 19, 2024 in York, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

DONALD TRUMP HAS NO PLANS TO HEED the advice of his aides and limit himself to policy contrasts when he debates Kamala Harris. He wants to make it personal.

“This is just the way I am. I hate my opponent. I hate my opponents,” Trump told a confidant who advised the former president to consider backing away from calling the vice president “stupid” or “dumb” at their high-profile standoff in a few weeks, which he has done repeatedly.

Trump explained to the confidant that he’s treating Harris the same way he did Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. “Hillary, Joe, Kamala. It doesn’t matter. I just hate them.”

To another adviser, Trump was blunt about taking on Harris: “I’m going to be mean.”

Trump’s desire to stay personal and vicious comes as some aides and advisers have grown fearful that such an approach could very well play into the vice president’s hands. Harris has structured her campaign on the Obama-esque pledge to move beyond the politics of division, and polls indicate it has so far resonated with voters.

The clashing of these styles will come to a head on September 10, when Harris and Trump are scheduled for a debate on ABC.

The fate of Trump’s campaign could depend on just how tough and personal he’ll be onstage during that debate, and how Harris responds to his attacks.

Trump’s early discussions about how to approach his debate with Harris—shared with The Bulwark on condition of anonymity by those who have spoken to him—mark a shift from his successful June 27 debate against Biden.

In that encounter, Trump was determined to remain calm, wary of repeating the missteps he made in their 2020 debate when he repeatedly talked over Biden and the moderator, Chris Wallace.

Trump succeeded, perhaps too well. Biden imploded so badly that twenty-four days later he quit the race under pressure from Democrats. That led to Harris’s ascension and reshaped the race to such a degree she’s now marginally leading, deeply angering Trump who saw his hopes of an easy win evaporate.

Trump advisers recognize that he’s committed to being aggressive and personal, and, as such, they are not attempting to sell him on the virtue of being Mr. Nice Guy at the September standoff. But some want him to tone down the assaults on Harris’s intelligence because it could turn off swing voters and set the bar exceedingly low for the vice president.

“If Harris is an idiot and she holds her own, then you could have two idiots on stage,” a Trump insider fretted. “Call her ideas stupid. Don’t call her stupid.”

Marc Short, a former top Trump administration official who prepared Vice President Mike Pence for his 2020 debate against Harris, said Pence made sure to not make it personal.

“You can’t get around the fact that having a white male debate a minority female creates a different dynamic,” said Short. “And you’re always sensitive to the media saying you’re ‘mansplaining’ if you get into a conversation in which you appear to try to put down your opponent. That’s always delicate. Trump doesn’t do delicate well.”

Another reason Pence focused on policy, Short said, was that the team had read in contemporaneous press accounts that Harris “doesn’t always prepare, she missed a lot of opportunities. Ask Tulsi Gabbard.”

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, damaged Harris in a presidential primary debate in 2020 by attacking her record as a prosecutor. Gabbard is now a Trump supporter and is helping with his debate prep, alongside Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was instrumental in Trump’s preparations against Biden.

“Tulsi knows how to outflank Kamala, and she just knows what it’s like to be on the big stage,” said one Trump adviser.

“Gaetz helped a ton. He is the best at this by far,” another adviser said. “He’s good at one-liners. He knows the issues in and out because he takes the time to study. He knows debating as an art form. He knows what’s coming and he knows what to say back.”

Unlike Pence, who insisted on conducting multiple 90-minute mock sessions in preparation for his 2020 debate with Harris, Trump is not making traditional preparations. Instead, he’s practicing set-piece exchanges on various topics and issues that may arise and holding what one adviser calls, “policy refresher” sessions.

“We’re doing not-debate-prep prep. And that keeps him in a better mindset,” said another adviser. “Getting back to these on a regular basis puts him where he wants to be.”

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TRUMP, ADVISERS SAY, HAS BEGUN coming to grips with Harris’s ascension on the ticket and Biden’s departure from it. And he has expressed a desire to have more of a presence on the campaign trail. He is keen on throwing haymakers at his opponents, including former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, who attacked and mocked him Tuesday night in their Democratic National Convention speeches.

On Wednesday, at a North Carolina rally, Trump twice mentioned Obama as he took issue with unnamed advisers who told him, “Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal. . . . You must stick to policy.”

Trump suggested that restraint would be unfair since his Democratic critics are “getting personal all night long.”

Later, Trump returned to the issue of whether he should get personal or not.

“We’re going to do a free poll,” he told the crowd. “Here are the two questions: Should I get personal? Should I not get personal?”

Almost everyone cheered for the former, almost no one for the latter.

“My advisers are fired,” Trump smirked.

“Nah,” he said, “we’d rather keep it on policy, but sometimes it’s hard when you’re attacked from all ends.”