Clinton preps to pounce; Trump bones up on policy

As the crowd waits for a Donald Trump rally to get underway Saturday night in Roanoke, Va., 7-year-old Hollie Hughes looks over a copy of Trump: How To Get Rich.
As the crowd waits for a Donald Trump rally to get underway Saturday night in Roanoke, Va., 7-year-old Hollie Hughes looks over a copy of Trump: How To Get Rich.

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's next major opportunity to motivate supporters and sway a narrow band of undecided voters will come in Monday's 90-minute, prime-time debate.

Both campaigns expect a record-setting television audience for the high-stakes showdown, which could help tip the balance in a tight White House race.

Six weeks from Election Day, and with early voting already underway, the opening debate, at Hofstra University in suburban New York, has both candidates hard at work making preparations, aides from both campaigns said.

Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has taken full days away from campaign travel to pore over briefing books, practicing to pounce if Trump makes false statements and steeling herself for the possibility that he levels personal attacks, campaign aides said. She's been preparing for the debate at her home in Westchester, N.Y., and a nearby hotel, where she was spotted with aides Saturday afternoon.

Longtime Clinton aide Philippe Reines is playing Trump in mock debates, according to a person familiar with the preparations who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and insisted on anonymity. And former President Bill Clinton has sat in on some sessions, offering advice from his own White House debates.

Trump, the Republican nominee, has eschewed traditional debate preparations but has held midflight policy discussions with a rotating cast of advisers, campaign officials said. He's also spent numerous Sundays batting around ideas with aides.

Advisers contend he will compensate for lacking in policy expertise by being quick on his feet, and that he will point to his experience with performing under pressure.

"Imagine the practice and the training of 13 years of reality television on The Apprentice and then imagine Hillary's experience reading hundreds of papers," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump adviser who has been talking through policy with the candidate in recent days.

Clinton aides have expressed fear that Trump will be judged more for his performance than his grasp of the challenges that pass across a president's desk. They've been flummoxed by Trump's ability to sail through the campaign without fleshing out many policy positions and glossing over past statements that he no longer views as politically palatable.

"Even if he meets some kind of lowered bar of being semicoherent and not having any outbursts, it's hard to imagine he'll avoid his own propensity for lying," said Brian Fallon, Clinton's campaign spokesman.

Asked whether Clinton planned to call Trump out in the debate if he tries to lie about his past statements, Fallon said, "I don't think she would let anything like that pass."

People familiar with Clinton's preparations say she has been working through answers to questions that hit at her lack of trustworthiness in the eyes of many Americans, a problem that has dogged her throughout the campaign.

On Twitter on Saturday, Trump criticized Clinton's decision to ask businessman Mark Cuban -- a frequent Trump critic -- to be one of her guests at the debate. Trump suggested he might put Gennifer Flowers, a woman who had a relationship with Bill Clinton, "right alongside" Cuban.

Trump misspelled Flowers' first name in his original tweet, then sent a corrected version minutes later.

At a rally Saturday night in Roanoke, Va., Trump suggested that if he were elected to the White House, he would do more for women than Clinton would.

He told supporters that Clinton likes to say she's been fighting for women and children for decades, but he then asked why 70 million women and children are in poverty or on the brink of poverty.

Clinton co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families early in her career and delivered a speech as first lady declaring that "women's rights are human rights."

Trump has been criticized over comments he's made about women -- often regarding appearance -- over the years.

new ads planned

With just weeks remaining until Election Day, the Trump campaign also was gearing up for what it says will amount to $140 million worth of advertising from now until Nov. 8.

The total, if executed, would feature $100 million in television airtime and $40 million in digital ads, according to senior communications adviser Jason Miller.

The plan represents a new approach for the businessman, who has bragged in recent weeks about how much less he's spent than Clinton and who has seemed to rely heavily on free media coverage of his rallies.

Through last week, the Trump campaign had put only about $22 million into TV and radio ads for the general election, according to Kantar Media's political advertising tracker. Clinton had spent more than five times as much on those kinds of ads, $124 million.

Trump's new ad buy will include 13 states, from key battlegrounds such as Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, to new targets of Maine, New Mexico and Wisconsin, Miller said. About $40 million of the ads will play on national TV, he said.

That averages to about $16.7 million per week in TV ads; Miller said the first $15 million ad buy was made Friday, although media buyers and services such as Kantar Media didn't immediately see evidence of that.

Trump's advertising plan costs more than his campaign has in the bank.

As of Sept. 1, the campaign had about $50 million in cash, though in a news release earlier this month, the campaign said it had $97 million in cash when including his joint accounts with Republican Party allies.

Clinton's ad reservations going forward total about $11 million per week.

N.Y. Times for Clinton

The New York Times on Saturday endorsed Clinton, a former secretary of state, U.S. senator from New York and first lady, for president, saying the Democrat's "record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas" represent the best choice to tackle the challenges the U.S. faces.

"Running down the other guy won't suffice to make that argument. The best case for Hillary Clinton cannot be, and is not, that she isn't Donald Trump," the newspaper said in an editorial for today's newspaper that was published online Saturday.

Clinton's "occasional missteps" have distorted perceptions of her character and her status as "one of the most tenacious politicians of her generation," the newspaper said.

By contrast, Trump "discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway," the Times wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also aired support Saturday for Clinton, accusing Trump and his fellow Republicans of "making hate OK."

"We're here to say hate is not OK," Warren told a crowd of roughly 500 volunteers packed inside a New Hampshire campaign office. "We build a stronger America together; that's what this is about."

She was particularly critical of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who said he'd vote for Trump after denouncing him in the primary campaign.

"Is that really what your word is worth, Ted Cruz?" she asked.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Emily Swanson, Julie Bykowicz, Jill Colvin and Kathleen Ronayne of The Associated Press and by Ros Krasny of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 09/25/2016

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