DONALD TRUMP CHOKES AT TOWN HALL DEBATE REHEARSAL

BY TINA NGUYEN

OCTOBER 7, 2016

“This isn’t practice,” Trump insisted, as a practice clock ticked down in front of him.

After the disaster of his first presidential debate, for which he largely refused to practice, Donald Trump spent a full week licking his wounds, melting down over “defective” mics and “sex tapes”, and vowing to hit back at Hillary Clinton harder than ever in their next face-off. But Trump’s campaign turnaround plan is already hitting all of the expected speed bumps. On Thursday, in a rare effort to prepare for Sunday’s town hall debate against Clinton, Trump conducted a public rehearsal in front of a live crowd in Sandown, New Hampshire. It did not go well.

“They were saying this is practice for Sunday. This isn’t practice,” Trump told the crowd, as he stood in front of a countdown clock that ticked off the two minutes that he was given to respond to pre-written questions from conservative radio host Howie Carr, a prominent Trump supporter. “We’re just here because we wanted to be here,” he added, as Chris Christie, his purported debate coach, watched anxiously from the side.

The Republican nominee proceeded to act in no way as if he attempting to prepare for this Sunday’s town-hall debate, so technically, he was not lying. He routinely blew past the supposed two-minute limit with his responses to questions such as, “What is your favorite childhood memory?” He stayed for 30 minutes instead of 90, taking only a dozen questions instead of the 20 promised in advance, and often went on the meandering, improvised tangents that might entertain at Trump rallies, but would likely fall flat before a crowd of undecided voters.

Still, Trump seemed to think he was doing more to prepare than his Democratic opponent. “Do you really think that Hillary Clinton is debate-prepping for three or four days?” he asked at one point. “Hillary Clinton is resting, okay?”

It is possible that Trump’s performance was simply an expert feint, dramatically lowering expectations just as his allies did before the first debate, hyping up Clinton’s professional political experience and spinning Trump’s lack of polish as a positive. Trump himself has telegraphed that his second outing Sunday will be more disciplined, telling the New York Post that he will not bring up Bill Clinton infidelities, as he promised to earlier last week, saying that he plans to “win this election on my policies for the future, not on Bill Clinton’s past.” A more controlled performance would indeed be seen as a positive, as his running mate Mike Pence’s cool and collected response to Tim Kaine proved Tuesday night. But Trump may not have the same capacity to remain level-headed if Clinton gets under his thin skin, as she did last week. Perhaps expectations are still not low enough.