'He scurried off that stage!' Trump stand-in says Harris 'alpha move' set tone for debate

The political consultant who helped Kamala Harris prepare to debate Donald Trump refused to say whether they practiced the handshake that seemed to set the tone for the night — but he said the former president never recovered from it.

Philippe Reines, a political operative and former State Department adviser to Hillary Clinton, stood in for the Republican nominee as Harris prepared for the debate. CNN's Kasie Hunt and other panelists pressed him Friday to say whether the vice president crossing the stage into Trump's space to shake his hand was a strategic decision.

"Well, what's funny about that is that's human behavior," Reines said. "That's just normal, like, I've never met you, I'm going to say hello. You would never have said Mitt Romney and [Barack] Obama – oh, my God, they shook hands. It's crazy that this was his seventh debate and no one has shaken his hand since Hillary."

He said she shook his hand and introduced herself when they met at the start of practice debates — but he sidestepped the question of whether the handshake was strategic and studied.

"I mean, Joe Biden didn't practice not shaking his hand," Reines said. "You're just like, I'm not touching that guy — I don't know where that hand has been. Actually, we do know where that hand has been."

Kate Bedingfield, who served as White House communications director for Biden, revealed that the president didn't shake Trump's hand at their debate because he was angry with the former president, although she said that interaction had not been rehearsed.

"Hillary refused to after the 'Access Hollywood' [tape was released], she's like, 'I'm just not,'" Reines said. "The fact that, you know, Nancy Pelosi had it right — like, no one should be on stage with him debating him, and she doesn't mean that in a second-guessing strategy kind of way, just this is not right. It's one of the many things that are not right about this thing."

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Reines watched the debate closely after helping Harris prepare, and he said the former president he portrayed during those sessions seemed to be in a hurry to exit afterward.

"If you watched all the way through, there was an overhead shot when it was over, and boy, did he scurry off that stage quickly," Reines said.

Former Republican pollster Sarah Longwell said that betrayed the fact that Trump knew he lost, and she said he never recovered from Harris crossing the stage to shake his hand at his podium to start the debate.

"That's a body language thing," Longwell said. "Here's the thing about that handshake – it was an alpha move from the jump. He wanted to avoid shaking hands. She went right in and said, 'No, no, I'm in your space and I'm going to start this debate,' and then she never let up. She was the alpha the whole time."

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