The 45th president will dominate the first GOP debate whether he's there or not.
Set for next week in Milwaukee, the Republican presidential debate will be the first time many of the top candidates appear on the same stage together, though Donald Trump is unlikely to be among them.
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"They're all going to try to break out, have a moment where they demonstrate their strength and their ability to be successful and to beat Biden," Republican strategist David Carney said.
In fact, the New Hampshire-based Carney predicts there will be more Trump talk if he's absent since going after him wouldn't run the risk of an in-person rebuttal.
"If the former president isn't there, there will be a lot more attacking of him than if he is there," Carney said.
It's a political axiom that incumbent candidates don't debate since doing so risks putting them on equal footing with challengers in the eyes of the electorate. Trump is not an incumbent but is polling like one with a 40-point lead in the latest RealClearPolitics average.
The Donald hasn't said either way whether he will be onstage in Milwaukee, leaving rival campaigns with A/B debate strategies. The second-place candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), says he's ready to go no matter what.
"I'm the only guy that Trump's campaign attacks, basically," DeSantis told Fox News. "The other candidates, a lot of them don't really say much about Donald Trump, and they focus more on me. So we're going to be ready for all of that."
The DeSantis campaign estimates Trump has spent $20 million attacking him so far. Whether due to those attacks or not, DeSantis has come back down to earth, losing half of his national support since April 1 and finding himself competing with the likes of Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) in state-level polls.
That indicates some of those candidates will be focusing on DeSantis, as he predicted, yet a DeSantis debate playbook indicates the attacking could go both ways.
A memo posted on the website of the super PAC supporting DeSantis includes a four-point debate plan: “1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”
Ramaswamy's campaign responded to the memo with a tongue-in-cheek statement.
"Vivek’s job on Aug. 23 is to introduce himself and his vision to the American people," spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said. "These boring, canned attack lines from a robotic candidate don’t change that. If DeSantis struggles to use a spoon, I can’t imagine he is particularly agile with a sledgehammer."
Christie's campaign didn't respond to questions from the Washington Examiner, but he's widely expected to savage Trump during the debate, as he's made doing so a central part of his campaign. The question for Christie, and for all of the non-Donald candidates, is how to establish themselves in the minds of voters while escaping Trump's long shadow.
One strategy is simply to call him out for threatening to skip. Former Vice President Mike Pence's team says he's eager for a debate, telling Politico he's ready if Trump "has the courage to show up."
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Yet even if he does skip, Trump may show up his rivals in a different sense by offering counterprogramming or by posting on social media throughout the night.
"You can't pretend he's not here," Carney, the GOP strategist, said. "I'm not saying people will be Christie and attack him 24/7, but he's going to be paramount to the less competitive guys who want to show they're willing to take him on. Trump will dominate that stage in conversation whether he's there or not."