An adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris dished Wednesday about how he approached his role as Donald Trump during mock debate sessions, telling CNN about his “three layers of bronzer” and other alterations to his appearance.
Philippe Reines, who previously had the same role during Hillary Clinton’s debate preparation sessions in 2016, said that he had a hard time getting all the makeup off afterward.
“I see why [Trump] is always like that,” Reines told The Source anchor Kaitlan Collins.
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Reines described acting “loud” and “buffoonish” during the sessions.
“I was focused on the left side of the screen, just making sure that she could get used to what she would see and feel,” he said. “You want them to say what they want to say, because it’s a job interview. You’ve got millions of people who are trying to side. And [Trump] knows that the only way he can get the job is by not letting her speak, not letting her get her ideas out. And to do that, you have to be loud. You have to be buffoonish. You have to lie like there’s no tomorrow.”
Reines said he only broke character “maybe once or twice.”
“My alarm in my house went off once, and I had to answer the phone to give them the safe word. That was just bad timing,” he said.
As for Harris initiating the handshake with Trump, Reines said that was not rehearsed.
“It’s not a matter of rehearsal. I mean, it’s a human thing to do,” he said. “In her mind, that was the right, bigger thing to do.”
And regarding Harris baiting Trump about certain things like crowd sizes, Reines said it really was about facts.
“When you talk about someone talking about sharks and electrocution, or Hannibal Lecter, those are facts, and they’re making a larger point. You are talking about someone detached from reality,” he said. “If she had just been sitting there going tit-for-tat with him, that would be pointless. But she gave it space to tell people this is what he did, this is why he was fired, this is what we inherited, this is what President Biden and I tried, and this is what I’m going to do going forward.”
“If you don’t give yourself the space to do that, to carve that out,” Reines continued, then Trump “is going to pretend that he just came on the scene a month ago and that he has never had a record, [that] he has never failed on immigration. I mean, the border wall—it’s not there. It’s just not there. We all heard it. It’s important to make that clear, and she did a phenomenal job of doing that.”
