Presidential Debate Prep Process

September 7, 2024 12:46 PM

Are there any good deep-dive articles (or book passages) about the behind-the-scenes details of Hillary Clinton's debate prep in 2016? I'm specifically interested in the choices Phillippe Reines made as the Trump stand-in. Did he try to replicate the stream-of-nonsense; how did they prep for specific wildly-unprofessional personal attacks?
posted by Blue Jello Elf to Law & Government (8 answers total)

This was literally on the front pages of the NYT today. Follow the links in the article or just google "Reines debate trump" for articles in Politico and elsewhere like I Played Trump in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Debate Prep. Here’s What It Takes to Beat Him and The Man Who Became Donald Trump. I worked with Phillip Reines for a while a long time ago. He's not shy about taking credit.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 2:56 PM on September 7 [1 favorite]

Here's a gift link for the NYTimes article mentioned above, where Clinton is interviewed about preparing for debates with Trump.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:56 PM on September 7 [1 favorite]

Bit of a tangent to your question, but you might find it worthwhile: Her Opponent, an NYU project (and off-Broadway play) that painstakingly recreated the Clinton-Trump debates, from the exact phrasing down to the facial expressions and hand gestures, but using gender-flipped actors. You can watch a long archival copy on their YouTube channel, it's really fascinating on both a technical and philosophical level.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:51 PM on September 7 [5 favorites]

When The West Wing Weekly covered the episode Debate Camp, they interviewed Ron Klain, Biden’s (then former) Chief of Staff, who has debate prepped Democratic candidates going back to 1992 (including for Biden’s debate disaster this year, so YMMV).

This is the episode in question.

Anyway, it’s an interesting way of looking at debate prep through the lens of a TV show.
posted by gmb at 8:43 AM on September 8

I recently listened to the audio book version of Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign and the characters and strategies used in her debate prep are extensively discussed.
posted by mdonley at 9:31 AM on September 8 [1 favorite]

I've been looking for any mefi post about tonight's debate.
Can someone kind please point me in the right direction?
posted by Jody Tresidder at 2:29 PM on September 10

Jody Tresidder: "I've been looking for any mefi post about tonight's debate.
Can someone kind please point me in the right direction?"

There's a brief post up now, but it looks like the plan is to have the live-blog portion on this FanFare post.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:35 PM on September 10

Rhaomi,
Thank you so much.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 5:22 PM on September 10