Rick Wilson is a national Republican message and media strategist.

Dear Republican presidential candidates not named Donald: Big night coming up, kids. Everyone studying? Memorizing your little quips and zingers? Working on your heartfelt-but-humanizing presentation? Ready for your moment in the Sun in the most beautiful of Presidential libraries? Making sure you know your Hamas from your Hezbollah?

Of course you’re not. You’re all in an existential panic over Donald Freaking Trump and his singlehanded destruction of the field of some of best and most qualified candidates in the last twenty-five years. Send the debate coaches away. That 600 page issue book? Save it. It’ll make a great doorstop. If you’re still looking at any media interaction with Trump as standard politics, you’re doing it wrong. You waited too long for that.


Here’s how to go at Trump at the Reagan Library CNN debate:

1. Of course you have to attack him. One of the dumb, but cherished tropes of this campaign, especially after Rick Perry’s exit from the race, is that to attack Donald Trump invites instant decline and doom in the polls. While correlation and causation are the kind of low-class, stupid arguments only people who didn’t go to Wharton make, Trump and his enablers certainly encourage this among his credulous followers (and more than a few conventional wisdom-loving process-story journalists) who believe any attack on the godhead is doomed to rebound.

With the scenery-chewing, oxygen-sucking political black hole that is Donald Trump, I have one question for the “don’t attack” camp; how’s that working out for you?

Inaction lets the media dynamic continue; “But he’s interesting! But he says crazy stuff! But he calls our shows! Oh, your tax plan is boring...let’s talk about Trump’s camo hat!” Trump’s commands attention. His position in the polls is directly correlated to the amount of attention (the insane, overwhelming, wall-to-wall) he receives and unless the attacks are persistent and ongoing, he’ll keep the hungry cameras on him.

2. Better late than never. I was wrong when I predicted your campaigns would go at him sooner, more aggressively, and with more determination. I underestimated your combination of passivity, consultant inertia, and insane hubris. You underestimated how the Trump-Rube-Media symbiosis would ensure his continued presence in the game.

I know you’re waking up, slowly. With the exception of you, Ted Cruz, who appears to be playing the role of political pilot fish to Trump’s Great White (the classiest of sharks; really, really, tremendous predator), most candidates have run a few hit-it-and-quit-it attacks, then fallen victim to the showman’s juvenile put-down machine more suited to an 8th grade locker room than a presidential candidate.

It’s clear now why many of you didn’t attack with persistence. You’re used to an oppo drop, an ad and then standing back. You just couldn’t process that the American people could be this fooled, for this long by such an obvious con. You tuned up to beat Hillary—and maybe Jeb along the way. But we go to war against the disruptive, postmodern, blowhard candidate we have, not the one we want. Get on it.





3. Go after his money and his business record. Attack where he is perceived to be strongest. Here’s what the media knows and has largely let slide; Donald Trump is not worth $10 billion. He’s not worth $5 billion. It’s fundamental to his brand image, his own (monstrous) ego needs, and the Trumpentariat’s love of him as the rich dude on the horse, unable to be corrupted by Washington’s venal blandishments.

On stage—tonight and in future debates—remind him he got his money the really old-fashioned way: from Daddy. Remind him that, for all his smack-talk about the Chinese, when he did business with them in the 1990s they beat him like a government mule and left him with almost nothing from the deal.

How have you guys never once asked him about his ties to the mob? I know, right? A guy in the casino business in Atlantic City in the 1980s and 1990s and with big Manhattan construction projects, pre-Giuliani? Go read Wayne Barrett or Tim O’Brien’s books, or at least have your oppo guys do it.

He fumbled the bankruptcy question the first time. That’s a hint for you. Come on...his companies filed bankruptcy twice for his casinos. Casinos, which are scientifically designed to take voters in his core demo and part them from their money, and this guy can’t make the payments? This line of attack should a slow pitch over the plate for any of you candidates.

If you, your strategists or your oppo people can’t understand the value of calling his B.S. on his money and making him break the celebrity character he plays on TV, please leave the race now.

4. Laugh off his attacks. Stupid tropes like “low-energy” and “loser” and “you asked me for a donation” tell you this is a grown-up schoolyard bully and putdown artist. As Adam Gopnik’s piece this week illustrated, Trump’s colossal ego is at once his armor and also a dead weight around his neck. Bullies hate ridicule as much than they hate someone who punches back. Carly Fiorina showed the way this week with a perfectly tuned rejoinder to Trump’s attacks on her appearance.

Tell me you wouldn’t pay money to hear someone say, “Donald, that’s really all I expect of you. This is a country in serious trouble and in desperate need of serious leadership, and all you’ve got it put downs about Carly’s looks or my energy level? Why don’t you go sit in the corner while the grownups talk?”

Don’t be afraid to throw your head back in laughter to the point where you get asked why, and reply, “This guy? President? You’re f-ing kidding me, right?” You want a headline from the debate? There you go.

5. You can’t shame him, so mock him. Trump’s narcissism renders him immune to shame for his lies, flip-flops, pandering, inconsistencies, elisions and general lack of substance. Enabled by 40 years of being carried in the sedan chair, praised along the way by an army of toadies and jocksniffers who would make the average courtier to Louis XIV blush, he’s accustomed to his minions telling him that his farts smell of daffodils and spring rain. Insult his vanity, not his record.

He cannot be shamed on policy, partly because he doesn’t remember what he said from one day to the next. He lives in the immediate moment, with no brakes on his internal monologue, no retrospection and no future accountability for his words. Don’t try. He won’t process it, and his supporters are locked in the Trump Reality Distortion Field.

6. Don’t indulge his filibustering, lying and showmanship. Don’t be afraid to have an “I paid for this microphone” moment with him. Again, like any bully, he’s great when he’s on offense and he’s great when it looks like you’ll let him stand there and kick your ass up and down the stage. Somewhere between 50 percent and 400 percent of the words that come out of his pie hole are lies, exaggerations, fantasies or mis-remembered quotes from emails with “FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD:” in the header. Interrupt him. Work the refs. Correct his lies.

7. This is now reality television, not Lincoln-Douglas. Sure, you want to be president, not an entertainer, and with Jake Tapper and Hugh Hewitt it on the panel, you’ll get points for being a smart, knowledgeable and grounded in the issues. But if the Summer of Trump taught you nothing, realize that this year’s electoral Coliseum is filled with a rabid horde, screaming for amusement and blood. Be in the debate you’re actually in, not the one in your head.

Come to the stage with some confidence, some swagger and some belief in the fight, but remember: It’s a mistake to simply fall back on your own talking points or your own stump speech. Be serious, but realistic about the media circus. Don’t expect that your policy proposals in this debate will get a lick of coverage. Don’t come in hoping to educate voters on your tax plan, your labor relations plan, your defense strategy or anything substantive. Neither the voters nor the media care. A huge fraction of the press is solely interested in the process story of the Trump Show.

8. Think hard about how much you suck up to Donald Trump in this debate. I’m looking straight at you Ted Cruz, indulging Trump and praising him. That’s just feeding the alligator and hoping you’ll get eaten last. Bubbles collapse, be they tulips, 1990s dot-com stocks, late 2000s real estate investment derivatives or billionaire loudmouth jackholes. When the Trump fall comes, the vortex is going to suck in his enablers and sycophants. And you know that purge the Trump Army is dreaming of with their #cuckservative #NRORevolt #RINO #WAR? Yeah, we make lists, too.

9. Stop worrying about the edge cases of the Trump demo. Are you worried about alienating the Trump demo? Want to be their new hero when he implodes? Well, stop. You will never be Trump. You will never light up those dark corners in their limbic system with the fear and loathing of The Other he inspires. They are worshiping Donald Trump like a cult leader, not a political leader. You can’t bring them home until he is destroyed. You won’t win them over by moral suasion, policy, politics, arguments about electability or ideology.

10. Don’t try to outbid Trump’s version of crazy. You can’t out-crazy him on anything. Nothing you do will be as fabulous, as world-class, as elite, and as terrific as Trump’s fantasies. He can always up the ante. If you want to build a 60-foot wall he’ll want to build a 90-foot wall. If you say you’ll deport 11 million people too, he’ll go up to 30 million. If you say you want to eliminate the 14th Amendment birthright citizens protections, he’ll want to undo it retroactively back through generations. If you say you want to arrest illegal alien criminals and deport them, he’ll propose armies of robot wolves to hunt them on pay-per-view. You can’t outbid him on this, and if I have to tell you why you shouldn’t try you should not be in this race.

11. Your targets aren’t his targets. You can keep making the case to the rest of the GOP electorate that he’s not a conservative. Remember, you’re not selling his voters; you’re selling Republican conservatives. Part of Trumpisma is convincing his supporters to embrace his frankly statist and redistributionist policies with the fervor of the converted. You’re not preaching to them. Target the still-large fraction of the GOP who oppose Trump and are higher-propensity voters. Target women, who are less susceptible to the Trump Spell. You’ll need them soon enough.

Overall, go out there tonight, swing for the fences, smile, laugh, have some fun. You could be living on a diet of lead paint, cheap vodka and Real Housewives and still know more than Trump does about, well, everything. Trying for dignity and stature in the face of the reality show you’re actually living? Give up. Embrace fighting The Donald. You can beat him. But only if you actually join the fight.

See? Wasn’t that more fun than boring debate prep?