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Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville warned Donald Trump that Kamala Harris is “coming for him” precisely 24 hours before the pair face-off on the debate stage.
“I think she is very well prepared. I think she’s coming with a game,” he told NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live on Monday night. “I hate to say this, but I expect her to do very well.”
“I don’t know what’s going on in Trump world, but he better tighten his chin strap, because she’s coming after him,” he said.
Carville’s predictions have proven correct before.
“Mark my words: Joe Biden is going to be out of the 2024 presidential race,” wrote Carville in his opening line of a New York Times op-ed, two weeks before the president stepped off the Democratic ticket in July.
Now, in anticipation of the Trump-Harris face-off in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday evening, the political strategist and pundit is insistent the vice president will give her Republican rival a rough ride on the debate stage.
As part of his pre-debate media blitz, the 79-year-old sported his trademark specs along with a khaki Marine Corps cap.
The political strategist has spent decades running presidential campaigns with prominent Democrats — from the successes of Bill Clinton 1992’s win to his wife Hillary Clinton’s narrow defeat to Barack Obama in 2008.
Leveraging his expertise, Carville noted that Trump is a “totally known entity,” while hinting that Harris’s mystique may work to her advantage in what promises to be a defining moment in the race for the White House.
“But with Harris, it’s not the same thing. People know who she is, but a lot of people don’t know what she is. There seems to be a pretty high number of people who say they could change their mind,” he told Intelligencer on Monday.
Harris and Trump are set to take to stage at approximately 9 p.m. ET, with a broadcast beamed live to ABC viewers across the nation.
The presidential nominee’s have reportedly taken very different approaches to their debate preparation.
Harris has spent days camped out in a Pittsburgh hotel for an intensive “debate camp.” A mock-up studio was built and a method-acting Trump impersonator employed — former Hillary Clinton aide Philipe Reines — in order to practice sparring with the real Republican presidential nominee.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke of Trump not needing “traditional debate prep,” she told Newsmax last week.
The former president has spent much of the run up to the event in his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club hosting “policy sessions” with aides and allies instead of more typical practice runs.
After weeks of back and forth between campaign teams, the rules of engagement have been agreed: no muted microphones, no pre-written notes, no live audience, no sitting and no speaking with campaign staff during commercial breaks.
