The first debate was a disgrace. NBC's moderator, Lester Holt, hurled attack after attack at Trump. Not only was the entire debate defined by a left-wing perspective, but Holt repeatedly threw character attacks at Trump and none at Hillary. Trump performed best when he turned those attacks around, whether on emails or on Libya. That should be the strategy for future debates.
Trump would be well advised not to waste time defending himself from attacks about his past. The only thing this accomplishes is to give the scandal airtime while making him appear defensive.
Since the moderators are likely to follow Holt's lead and refuse to discuss any of Hillary's many issues, the only way to incorporate them into the debate is to bring them up. Any attacks on Trump should be immediately redirected to questions about Hillary. This will make them an issue. Focusing on them will leave a biased moderator working to help Hillary with only two options. Either he can escalate the confrontation with Trump or pivot to actually discussing the issue out of the conviction that Hillary will do better in a discussion of more serious topics.
What the moderators cannot be allowed to do is conduct another one-sided inquisition as Lester Holt did last night.
Mainstream media moderators should never have been allowed to helm the debates. But presumably that is not about to change for this series of debates. (Though it could and ought to.) But moderators should be forced to choose between discussing Hillary's scandals and discussing issues. What they cannot be allowed to do is to repeat Holt's performance of allowing Hillary to discuss issues and Trump's scandals... and then insisting on limiting Trump to discussions of his scandals.
Romney made the mistake of trying to play the game. And he lost. Trump should not make the same mistake.