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Notes -
The public likes Trump more when he shuts up. Throughout all his political campaigns (with an exception of early 2016) and his entire presidency, his approval rating and polling would go down when he was in the news for saying boneheaded crap, and then it'd go back up when he wasn't saying anything at all. Trump doesn't ever really do stuff that's good PR, so simple "not bad" is the high point for him.
The Harris campaign likely judges that the more he speaks, the more likely he is to put his foot in his mouth. The most spectacular example of this was the first debate in 2020 when he acted like a petulant child the entire time, which cost him 4% in post-debate polling. 4% is a crazy big move in an era of hyper polarization.
There's also the chance that Trump is now just too old to really quip back effectively. Trump has never been a particularly effective debater. He could hold his own in 2016 and benefited from his opponent imploding in 2024, but he's always had a meandering semi-coherent speaking style that's only become worse with age. There could be an opportunity for Harris to jab at him in a way that he couldn't effectively counter.
Trump's campaign knows he's a liability, but Trump himself almost certainly doesn't like being "muzzled" to any extent, so it's Trump + Dems on one side and Trump's campaign on the other, trying to keep their candidate from another self-inflicted wound. I can only imagine the lies his campaign staff is trying to cook up to convince him not to turn on the mics, because they obviously can't tell the truth to someone like him.
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