How Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Are Preparing for Their Final Debate
Unsurprisingly, the two candidates are taking opposite approaches.
-- With the final presidential debate of the 2016 campaign just two days away, the candidates' teams have been talking about how they're approaching the big night.
Hillary Clinton continues to put serious amounts of time toward her debate prep, taking days off from the campaign trail, while Donald Trump and his team are stressing that his time is better spent talking to voters.
"He loves these forums," Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said on CNN this morning. "He loves these debates because he's the one out there every single day ... talking to people at rallies, at forums.
"He's not taking five days off the trail like she is. That's her personal choice. I know scarcity is her strategy. The less people see her, the more they forget they don't like her, they don't trust her," Conway added.
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, said on Friday that the candidate and her team are aware that taking time off from the trail comes at a cost, but it is one they are willing to pay.
"We don't like to have to take a lot of time off the trail to do that," Palmieri said of debate prep. "But we have found that that is very worthwhile. This is the last one. We are hoping for another large audience, and it's her last time in front of the biggest audience, and we want to make sure we're [making] the best use of that."
Clinton had no public campaign events scheduled from last weekend through the Wednesday night showdown.
The final Clinton-Trump debate is being held at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and will be moderated by Fox News' Chris Wallace.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced that Wallace has selected debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots and fitness to be president as the tentative topics of the debate.
Wednesday night's debate will have the same format as the first Clinton-Trump debate, with six topics allotted 15 minutes each for discussion.