Democratic US presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s advisers are talking to Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal, seeking insights about Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to needle and undermine him in four weeks at the first presidential debate, the most anticipated in recent political history.
Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Trump to gauge how he might respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage.
They are undertaking a forensic-style analysis of Trump’s performances in the Republican primary debates, cataloging strengths and weaknesses as well as trigger points that caused him to lash out in less-than-presidential ways.
As Clinton pores over this voluminous research with her debate team, Trump is taking the opposite tack. Although he spent hours with his debate team the last two Sundays, the sessions have been more freewheeling than focused, and he can barely conceal his disdain for laborious and theatrical practice sessions.
Clinton’s and Trump’s strikingly different approaches to the Sept. 26 face-off are more revealing about their egos and battlefield instincts than most other moments in the campaign.
Clinton, a deeply competitive debater, wants to crush Trump on live television, but not with an avalanche of policy details; she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders.
Meanwhile, Trump, a supremely self-confident communicator, wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Clinton on her ethics and honesty.
In compiling research to help Clinton prepare, her advisers have cast a wide net. They contacted Tony Schwartz, the Art of the Deal coauthor, to give them advice about Trump this summer.
Schwartz, in an interview, declined to comment about any conversations with the Clinton campaign, but he said Trump would be vulnerable if Clinton proved to be calm, deliberate and relentless in attacking Trump’s character, volatility and readiness to be commander-in-chief.
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