Hillary Clinton's press secretary Brian Fallon says she is "absolutely" healthy enough to debate Donald Trump in New York on Sept. 26. | Getty Clinton camp: She won't try to 'provoke' Trump in debate

When Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton meet for their first rumble on the debate stage in just 11 days in New York, the Democratic nominee will not be looking to "provoke" her opponent, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon insisted Thursday.

While Fallon acknowledged to MSNBC's Thomas Roberts that the campaign does not know which "Donald Trump we're gonna get," he dismissed the idea that Clinton's strategy would include eliciting an outburst from the famously unscripted candidate. The New York Times reported last month that the Clinton campaign has consulted with Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” co-author Tony Schwartz, along with “other writers who had observed [him] up close” and “unnamed psychology experts.” Those people, the Times summarized, citing the unnamed advisers, “were critical to understanding how to get under Mr. Trump’s skin.”


"I don't think we're going to be going in there seeking to provoke Donald Trump. I think she's going to go in and do what she always does, which is show that she's got the grasp of the issue and the command and poise and the presence to be commander in chief. And I think the contrast there will speak for itself," Fallon said, while adding, "The reality in these prep sessions, we have to prepare for two possibilities. We have to prepare essentially for two different Donald Trumps because we don't know which one is going to show up at the debate stage later this month at Hofstra."

Trump has been "tethered to a teleprompter" since campaign manager Kellyanne Conway took over the reins, Fallon said, adding that the businessman has muted "his normal self for the purposes of making himself more palatable to a general election voter group that he was alienating left and right prior to August."

Roberts asked Fallon in the same discussion whether Clinton is "healthy enough" and prepared to take on Trump in the first debate, scheduled for Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.

Clinton returned to the campaign trail Thursday in North Carolina after resting at home several days following a diagnosis of pneumonia and amid lingering scrutiny over both candidates' physical fitness to be commander in chief. The former secretary of state publicly released additional information about her recent health episodes on Wednesday, on the same day Trump first shared his physician's medical report with "The Dr. Oz Show." His campaign released the documents upon the episode's airing Thursday.

"Oh, absolutely, Thomas. She takes all the debates very seriously. The voters saw that during the primary. She does her homework going into these debates. And I think that she treats the debates as an essential proving ground for anyone that's seeking to be president of the United States," Fallon explained. "You have to go and prove to the American people that you have the command and the fitness to occupy the Oval Office."

Fallon also discounted the notion that the tightening between Clinton and Trump in the polls of battleground states represented anything more than a "natural point here in the campaign where it’s happening post Labor Day."

"I think in fact there was probably a little bit of an effect after the conventions where our bounce was probably a little prolonged by the fact that Donald Trump was incurring all these self-inflicted wounds by going around doing things like insulting Gold Star families," he remarked. "But I think this, I think this given the level of polarization of our country today, this is the norm for presidential elections. They are very tight contests. I think in general we are on offense in terms of the battleground map."