Vice President Kamala Harris has been carefully preparing for the debate for months – first to face the Republican vice presidential nominee and now in recent weeks to face former President Donald Trump, according to four sources familiar with the Democratic candidate’s preparations.

The preparatory sessions took place between campaign appearances, official duties as vice president and preparation for her first joint interview with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, which aired on CNN Thursday night, the sources said.

Harris’ main goals, the sources said, include avoiding getting drawn into Trump’s personal attacks by keeping calm and focusing on talking about how her presidency would help ordinary people.

Harris also wants to highlight what Trump’s campaign described as his lies, failures and broken promises during his time in office, and to differentiate the administration she seeks to lead from that of President Joe Biden while building on his legacy.

As of Thursday evening, however, there was still no agreement between the Trump and Harris camps on the rules for the September 10 debate hosted by ABC News.

Getting under Trump’s skin

A source told NBC News that while Harris’ team is preparing to talk about a variety of issues, the campaign sees the optics of the debate as extremely important. For that reason, the source said, Harris and her team are focused on figuring out how to provoke and unsettle Trump.

In that sense, the source said, it will be less about substance and more about presenting Harris as a woman who is not afraid and does not cower, who stands up to Trump and holds him accountable.

Her campaign also hopes to “remind people what it was like during Donald Trump’s term in office,” the source said.

That strategy includes Harris potentially addressing issues such as: Trump’s failure to get Mexico to pay for the southern border wall, his response to the Covid pandemic, his failure to put forward an alternative health care plan after he tried to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and his inability to pass the sweeping infrastructure bill that Biden signed. Harris is also expected to criticize Trump for his crucial role in Republicans’ reluctance to pass a bipartisan border bill that would address many of the issues he uses to attack Democrats.

According to another source, Harris’ team wants to emphasize Trump’s advanced age and the lack of details in his policy proposals.

“If you listen to the first debate without Joe Biden, it was the second worst debate performance in the history of presidential debates. It was simply overshadowed because Joe Biden’s performance was so terrible,” the source said.

The source added that while Harris is a “real human being” who gets angry and emotional, the goal for her is to remain calm, no matter how personal the attack.

Tensions over distancing from Biden

The distinction between Harris and Biden is a source of tension, as some on Harris’ team believe that Harris should respectfully but firmly place blame directly on Biden for some problems, such as the Afghanistan withdrawal.

According to one source, the withdrawal is seen as an “obvious vulnerability” in 2021 and Harris is preparing to deal with it.

“They’re trying to figure out how to put some distance between her and some of his decisions,” the source said. “You could say, ‘I’m the vice president; I work on behalf of and under the direction of the president.’ She wants to figure out how to strategically answer those questions without causing problems for Biden. … But there are some on the team who don’t really care about causing problems for Biden.”

Avoiding a Tulsi Gabbard moment

Harris and her team are particularly focused on avoiding a moment from a Democratic presidential primary debate in July 2019, when Tulsi Gabbard, then a Hawaii congresswoman, launched a lengthy attack on Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

Gabbard accused Harris of putting more than 1,500 people in prison for marijuana violations during her tenure as a California prosecutor, adding that she “laughed about it when she was asked if she had ever smoked marijuana.” The quip drew applause from the audience.

Harris and her team were unprepared for the attack and are working to ensure they can respond quickly if Trump takes a similar approach.

“She was unsettled. She was hanging on the floor. And she had no home or value proposition to get out of there,” said a source. “She recovered. She came back and had a good debate against Mike Pence. But that moment will stay with Harris for a long time.”

Gabbard recently endorsed Trump and is preparing for a debate with Harris.

Coming soon: mock debates in a very small circle

Harris has only a small team directly involved in debate preparations. They include her brother-in-law Tony West, her longtime aide Rohini Kosoglu, Brian Nelson, a senior political adviser to the campaign, and Josh Hsu, her top White House counsel.

As part of the preparations so far, Harris has provided briefing books on various topics and held question-and-answer sessions.

The four sources expect Harris to participate in extensive mock debates after her trip to Georgia and her Labor Day travel initiative.

According to NBC News, the Harris team has tapped longtime Democratic strategist Philippe Reines to play Trump, reprising the role he played alongside former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump’s approach to the September debate

Trump’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he did not need traditional debate preparation.

“President Trump has proven himself to be one of the best debaters in political history, as evidenced by his devastating blow to Joe Biden,” she said in a statement. “He needs no traditional debate preparation because, unlike Kamala Harris, he masters the issues, sits down for interviews frequently and answers questions from hostile news media almost daily.”

Trump hinted this week that he might withdraw from the debate, saying ABC News had treated Republicans unfairly. The Harris campaign pushed for the use of live microphones, something Trump was initially indifferent to but his campaign opposed.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Harris’ campaign, wrote on X on Thursday that the campaign had been asked to comply with Trump’s team’s request to mute the microphone, claiming that “his advisers do not trust him to face Vice President Harris live.”