When Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump take to the debate stage Tuesday in Philadelphia, it will be the first time the pair meets face to face.

Harris is hunkered down in Pittsburgh to prepare for the debate ahead. Some are warning her not to engage with Trump if he attacks her race and gender, which they expect him to do.

“I think he is going to throw a lot of very ugly things at her,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of moderate conservatives and former Republican Party members who oppose the former president. “I think he's going to say some terrible things. And I think my counsel would be, when he does that, do not go into the rabbit hole he puts out there for you.

“She correctly and wisely did not go in that rabbit hole during the CNN interview she gave nor did her campaign,” Wilson added. “The correct way to respond to something like that is to say: ‘Donald, there is something wrong with you. I feel bad for you. You need help. Go back behind your podium.’ Do not let him get you dragged onto his terrain. Even if the things he's saying are horrible and outrageous and evil and cruel, do not get dragged into his terrain.”

In that CNN interview last month, Dana Bash asked Harris about the former president’s comments made at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, in which he questioned her race.

“Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please,” Harris said in response to Bash’s question.

Imani Cheers, a professor of digital storytelling at The George Washington University, said it makes sense that Harris is allowing others to talk about her gender and the groundbreaking nature of her campaign, rather than focusing in on it herself. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton often leaned into the focus on her gender and the groundbreaking nature of her candidacy in her 2016 race against Trump, which Cheers said may have been one of many missteps in that campaign.

“There's some things that you have to overstate – which are the policies – which are … her vice presidency, the major issues that her and President Biden have focused on in the last four years,” Cheers said.

Cheers said leaning into gender, race or ethnic identity “isn't anything that is going to benefit you in such a short campaign season.” 

“I believe if Kamala Harris had been going in as a presumptive nominee six months ago, we might have seen a larger conversation around her race and her gender,” she said. “But again, we have a very shortened, historically shortened campaign season for her to remind voters of her record and to really, again, not focus on some other — not less important, but just less immediately — things that she wants to discuss.”

One page of Clinton’s book that Harris is taking: her debate prep partner.

Philippe Reines, a political consultant who served as a senior adviser to Clinton, is standing in for the former president during Harris’ debate preparation. It’s the same role he played for Clinton in 2016. 

Cheers also pointed out the unfair expectation that women or minorities running for office need to speak about their experience as if it were the only worthwhile feature they bring to the table.

“We don't ever bring up that when it comes to a white man running,” Cheers said. “It's not necessarily something where we're like, ‘Oh, let's focus on their whiteness … let's focus on … their gender.’ But when it is a woman or a person of color, then it's expected that those should be some of the main talking points.”

While Clinton and Trump roamed the stage freely talking to the audience, that will not be the case this time around. There will be no audience, and the candidates are to stand behind their podiums during the debate. The microphones will only be on when it’s each candidate's turn to speak, a rule the Harris campaign unsuccessfully pushed back against.

Wilson said he believes Trump will fall into similar attack patterns Tuesday, even with the microphone muting guardrail. He called Trump “very angry. He’s very paranoid.”

“He doesn't have control of his emotions or his behavior right now,” Wilson said. “You can see it because he's up all night tweeting or truthing, whatever it is. You can see it in the tone of his rallies and town halls and press conferences.”

Harris, Cheers said, needs to hone in on her message for the night to be a success.

“I think she's honestly probably been waiting for an opportunity, in particular, as a prosecutor, to bring up a number of Donald Trump's legal challenges that have nothing to do with his race or gender, but everything to do with his conduct and being held accountable for his actions,” she said. “And I think that's really where she's going to lean in. She's going to lean in on reminding … the voters, the American public, the world of what her record is and also what her opponent's record is, and those aren't going to be focused on gender or race.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who faced Harris on the debate stage when both were running to be the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, said in an interview with CNN on Monday that the vice president is “a very focused and disciplined leader,” but that it would take “almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate.”

“It's no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they're going to make people better off. It's because he's a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him,” said Buttigieg, who helped Harris prepare for her debate with former Vice President Mike Pence in 2020. “But the less we're talking about him and the more we're talking about you, the better it's going to be for the vice president.”

Buttigieg added that whatever Trump says on the debate stage “will require a response,” but he cautioned Harris from allowing the former president “to change the subject from the difference between his very unpopular set of policies and record and her vision for America's future.”

In an interview with the “Rickey Smiley Show that was recorded Sept. 4 and released Monday, Harris said she’s prepared to face Trump, telling the former president “is probably going to speak a lot of untruth,” and that she thinks “he’s gonna lie.”

“He’s played through this really old entire playbook where there's no floor for him in terms of how low he would go,” argued Harris. “We should be prepared for that.”

On a call ahead of the debate with reporters, the Trump campaign said the former president will go after Harris’ time as vice president.

“She owns every failure of the Harris-Biden administration," said Trump aide Jason Miller. 

As to how Trump has been preparing for the debate, his team pointed to the former president’s consistent interviews, rallies, podcasts and town halls.

“You can’t prepare for President Trump. There’s just no way to do it,” quipped Miller.

The debate will be held in Philadelphia and hosted by ABC, with anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis set to moderate. The debate will be simulcast on Spectrum News, with special coverage scheduled to begin at 8:45 p.m. Eastern.