Microphone on or muted, Donald Trump must meet Kamala Harris for the debate. It will be perhaps the only opportunity to press her to answer actual, unscripted questions about her plans and policies, so he must keep the whole thing from devolving into just traded insults. The stakes are high; Trump needs to pull ahead.

Harris has taken a page out of Joe Biden’s 2020 basement campaign playbook to duck most media interviews far into her run for the White House. It is a curious strategy, locking out the media when they are so sympathetic and would likely toss her a few softball questions and leave it at that. Harris need only create the appearance of openness and cognition on the issues of the day (welcome to The View) and take a brief step away from her teleprompter to silence the few critics she has on this matter. The worry is because “almost all of her worst moments as vice president have come in live interviews,” as one analyst said. A single pabulum-plagued CNN chat with Tim Walz along as her emotional support animal does not move the needle.

The trick would be for Trump to be prepared with questions of his own for Harris, pointed, specific questions he could pose to her in the course of the debate, as a sort of replacement to the wishy-washy stuff the ABC hosts are likely to spoon out to her. Here are a few suggestions:

– A few weeks ago we passed the sad three-year anniversary of America's 2021 final withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some 13 Americans died in that operation, alongside countless Afghans and others. You have mentioned you were the last person in the room with President Biden when he approved the plans for the evacuation. What advice, specifically, did you give Joe? Did he take it? You said you were “comfortable” with the president's decision and admired his courage for making the call at the time. In retrospect, what changes would you have made, for example, not limiting the evac to a single site as was done, allowing the Taliban to focus its own forces?

– As a follow-up, I was at the wreath-laying ceremony in August for the Americans killed that day. Why weren’t you? As a second follow-up, what specifically has been done in the past three years to bring out safely those Afghans who had risked their lives to assist us in that war but were left behind during the evacuation? How many have been brought to the U.S.? If you don’t know, why not?

– One more follow-up on Afghanistan. At a conference in Detroit for the National Guard Association of the United States, I (Trump) argued American’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was a domino that led to global conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. I stated, “Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world. It gave us Russia going into Ukraine. It gave us the October 7 attack on Israel, because it gave us lack of respect.” Is this true? Can you tell us your best answer of why Putin waited until I was out of office to invade Ukraine? He invaded Crimea under Obama and now Ukraine under Biden. Do you see the same pattern many Americans do in that timing?

– When did you first notice Joe Biden's mental facilities starting to fade, and what did you do about it? Did you tell anyone? Discuss it with his doctor? Why not? Did you ever participate in a discussion about the 25th Amendment? When was that? You publicly took no position on Joe's stepping down. Why not, as one of the people best suited to observe him and his decision-making up close?

– You never won any primaries. What qualifies you to have been appointed the Democratic candidate? Shouldn’t whoever was in second place coming out of the primaries have been given consideration? Please answer using the phrase “will of the people.”

– When I left office, the price of a gallon of gas was $2.17. It is now about $3.30 under Biden-Harris. Food prices are 20 percent higher today than when you and Joe took office. Why?

– You advocate for price controls, specifically on food items. How will you do this without putting most grocery stores out of business? Do you know what the average profit margin is for food stores? It’s 1.6 percent. The industry’s slowed same-store sales growth of only 2.1 percent last year was driven by Biden-Harris inflation. How much more can you cut? Google meanwhile enjoys a 26.77 percent margin. What are your plans to put a price cap on that? And again, what about gas prices? Plans?

– Almost 50 percent of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a worse state now than it was when Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Do you think they blame you, too, or do you consider most Americans too stupid to realize how good the economy actually is under your leadership? The Bidenomics fanboy Paul Krugman actually went so far as writing in the Times, “Until recently I thought everyone—well, everyone following economic issues—knew this. There are two big questions right now about the U.S. economy,” says Krugman. “One is why it’s doing so well. The other is why so many Americans insist that it’s terrible.” Stupid voters, not keeping up with the Times. Agree?

– Back in 2019, Biden slammed my imposition of tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports. He said, “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.” In 2020, while campaigning for the White House, Biden vowed to remove my tariffs if elected. Instead, he kept my tariffs in place and imposed $18 billion in new, additional tariffs on China. Are you prepared to say now I was right?

– The previous two administrations averaged about 5,000 individually selected cases per year—not per day as frequently occurs under Biden-Harris—crossing the southern border. Past uses of mass parole include the one-time flood of migrants after the Vietnam War (340,000 people, 75 “Biden-Harris Border Days”) and the Mariel Boatlift (125,000, 27 “Biden-Harris Border Days”) from Cuba. Every administration, Republican and Democratic, used parole in emergencies; before Biden-Harris, it was never the cornerstone of an ongoing mass migration program. Parole used this way is part of the asylum process which is being abused daily on the southern border. Do you plan to continue the use of mass parole on this scale? Why? Can you even explain how immigration parole works alongside asylum claims?

– Which sanctuary city mayors have you spoken to personally? What did they tell you about the burden on their cities of these Biden-Harris immigration programs? Did you consult with any of them before unleashing this virtual invasion of migrants as to how they would deal with it all? Why not? If you have not yet spoken to these sanctuary city mayors about this, why not? I noticed the Democratic mayor of New York City was not invited to speak at your convention. Another “why” question, I suppose.

– Some people criticized my administration for putting "kids in cages," actually a Clinton-era policy. Now, the Biden-Harris administration has potentially lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents, according to a Homeland Security Inspector General’s report released in August. These children—who were released into the U.S. to “qualified sponsors”—are now at risk of sex trafficking, forced labor, and other forms of exploitation. One federal whistleblower said that she believes many of these vulnerable kids could already be in the hands of criminals. What is being done to track the welfare of these kids?

It'll be a helluva job, I tell you: some 291,000 migrant children who arrived as unaccompanied minors were never given a date to appear in immigration court, meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts. That's in addition to the 32,000 children ICE released into the U.S. with hearing dates who then failed to show in court. You seem sympathetic; in 2021, I mean when you visited the southern border for the first and only time you said, “This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we are talking about suffering.”

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– Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret that Facebook caved in to the Biden-Harris administration to censor content. Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook teams to suppress Covid content the platform otherwise would not have restricted. Zuckerberg also conceded the platform should not have censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. The White House asked companies to censor specific individuals over vaccine-related speech, including Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Kamala, what was the purpose of this censorship? What were your administration's goals, particularly with the Biden laptop story? How does it square with the First Amendment?

– When will you delineate those actions under Biden-Harris you stand behind and those from which you are trying to run away?

– If you suddenly find yourself unemployed in January 2025, what job prospects are you considering?