In what is surely one of the more perplexing decisions made by Donald Trump’s campaign, the G.O.P. nominee has reportedly tapped former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who resigned last month amid a flurry of sexual harassment charges, to help him prepare for the upcoming presidential debates against Hillary Clinton.

Three people with knowledge of the arrangement told the Times that Ailes will serve as an advisor to the billionaire as he attempts to change his current course, which has had him careening off a cliff in recent polls. Two of them noted that Ailes could stay on beyond the debates to keep Trump on track until the general election in November. (Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the story is not accurate. “He is not advising Mr. Trump or helping with debate prep. They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” she wrote in an e-mail. Ailes’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

If Ailes is, in fact, part of Trump’s debate team, there is no question that he has the experience. An advisor who helped turn Richard Nixon into a palatable candidate in 1968, Ailes went on to prep several Republican candidates for the debate stage, from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush. He went on to be a Republican kingmaker when he started Fox News in 1996, making stars out of conservative candidates and commentators alike under his tutelage and the bright lights of cable news. (Trump’s own candidacy has benefited mightily from the spotlight Ailes shone on his political crusades over the past half decade.)

What is questionable is Trump’s reported decision to bring Ailes on now, just three weeks after he resigned from Fox News in the wake of allegations that he sexually harassed female employees and spent millions of dollars to keep his behavior under wraps. The trouble for Ailes started more than a month ago, when longtime anchor Gretchen Carlson filed suit, claiming she had been fired from the network in retaliation for rebuffing his advances. In the subsequent weeks, scores of women have come forward with similar allegations, including a former Fox News booker who claimed the network paid her a $3.15 million settlement to keep the decades-long sexual relationship she had with Ailes quiet. Megyn Kelly, one of the network’s brightest talents, reportedly told lawyers tasked with investigating Ailes’s behavior that he had sexually harassed her a decade ago.

Trump, who has been close to Ailes for years, has long had his own public problems with women. The Republican nominee famously tangled with Kelly last year at the first primary debate. The feud started with Trump responding to what he viewed as an unfair question from Kelly by saying she had blood “coming out of her wherever,” led to the candidate pulling out of the next primary debate she moderated, and ended with them “clearing the air” in a Fox News prime-time special.

Bringing Ailes on, given the context, would seem like political suicide for most campaigns. Perhaps that is why Hicks, who is famously unresponsive to requests for comment, denied the report so quickly. But the lack of judgment for how the could be perceived is in keeping with the Trump campaign, which has been dogged by questions about the candidate’s past treatment of women, Kelly included. Whether voters will connect the dots between Ailes’s recent scandal and his reported behind-the-scenes role seems less likely. The chance that Trump supporters would care is even slimmer.

Still, the report means another negative news cycle for Trump, and another note for Clinton to strike if she so chooses. That the candidate would deliberately put himself in the line of fire when he has been under siege for a series of poor judgement calls over the past several weeks is precisely why Trump is in a downward spiral. But if anyone can spin a Republican spiral into gold (though seemingly not his own), it’s Roger Ailes.