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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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Donald Trump "hates" preparing for debates, his former White House communications director has said.
Speaking on the podcast The Rest Is Politics U.S., Anthony Scaramucci, now a vocal Trump critic, said the former president used to remove debate preparation time from his schedule. On June 27, Trump is due to debate President Joe Biden, their first such meeting this election cycle, at CNN's studio in Georgia, a critical battleground state.
Scaramucci, who served under the Trump administration for 11 days in July 2017 before being fired, said Trump: "hates debate prep. You know, Kellyanne Conway [another former Trump aide] scheduled debate prep in 2016. He used to take it out of the schedule.
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"She finally said, 'OK, you know what? I'm going to have a lunch with Donald Trump.' And she would sit down in his office and have lunch with him. And she'd have the debate prep in, like, these little index cards. And she'd try to have a debate prep with him over lunch. And he would look at her and say: 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. This feels like debate prep. I don't want to do debate prep.' So the president, President Trump, does not like debate prep."
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Scaramucci, who has endorsed Biden, added that debates Trump did in 2020 contributed to him losing the election, and that before he faces Biden again, his team would show him videos of his past performances and advise him on how to change his behavior.
Speaking on CNN News Central on June 17, Republican campaign strategist Scott Jennings also issued a warning about Trump's debating style, saying there was a risk Trump could be "overly aggressive."
"The biggest risk is being overly aggressive, getting bogged down in things that are not on the minds of the American people," he said, adding: "You have to keep the debate on those grounds. If you willingly wander off into some other area, it could be a bad night for you and give Biden what he needs, which is a change of trajectory in his campaign."
He continued: "He needs to avoid the disaster that was the first debate of 2020, where Trump really saw the last possibilities of him winning the election go away. So being under control and staying over the target of these issues, like inflation and immigration, he's got a really good chance to come out of this debate a little bit better than he is today."
Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, told Newsweek: "This individual has never participated in debate prep of any kind so how would he know?"
David Axelrod, a senior political commentator at CNN and former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, said on the same show that Biden, on the other hand, needed to be "on the offense" to make his case against Trump during the debate.
So far, polls have shown that the results of the 2020 election rematch will be tight, with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys.
However, a "supercomputer" has predicted a 64.6 percent chance for Biden to win against Trump in the first debate.
After Thursday's debate in Georgia, a second debate between the two candidates is scheduled for September 10. Then, on November 5, voters are set to cast their ballots for the next president.
Update 06/24/24 at 3:32 a.m. ET; This article was updated with comment from Donald Trump's communications director.
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