It's become a familiar ritual in the 2016 campaign: A terrorist strikes somewhere, and the candidate phones into the cable news shows to talk tough and offer insta-reaction before all the facts are in.

Except that candidate has always been Donald Trump — until Thursday night.

Hours after Mohamed Lahouaiej plowed his truck through a crowded boardwalk in Nice, Hillary Clinton was mimicking her rival’s tactics, calling into CNN and even the hostile turf of Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” to promise victory in what she called “a war” against terrorist groups.

Clinton’s quick response on Thursday night, which runs counter to what advisers call her own cautious instincts, reflects her campaign’s determination not to let Trump define the debate about the sickening parade of terror in Europe and the United States. A Thursday CBS News/New York Times poll found Clinton and Trump tied on the question of who voters trust more to respond to terrorism. (Other recent polls have shown Clinton with an advantage.)

Clinton aides insist the terror debate — and jarring world events like Friday’s attempted military coup in Turkey on Friday — plays to her strengths: experience, responsibility, command of the issues. They point to polling that showed the public overwhelmingly preferred her measured response to last month’s massacre in Orlando over Trump’s blustery rhetoric.

"Hillary Clinton represented America as our nation's top diplomat and she understands that every word our leaders say on the world stage truly matters,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Lehrich. “Her first reaction to news of an attack is to understand the situation before offering a serious, informed response. Donald Trump hears the same breaking news, and rather than waiting for facts to emerge or consulting with experts, he immediately takes to Twitter and cable news to stoke fears and demonstrate how temperamentally unfit he is to be commander in chief."

But some advisers acknowledge that Clinton is, to use the parlance of counterterrorism, fighting an asymmetrical war with Trump. Her GOP rival offers from-the-gut words — “bomb the hell out of ISIS” — with little concern for how realistic they might be or how they might sound overseas. And if Trump can show more discipline in the campaign's closing months, he could cause headaches for Clinton in the wake of the future terror attacks that her team grimly anticipates.

Clinton is hamstrung in several ways. As a lawyer and former top government official, she’s reluctant to speak before she’s analyzed all the facts. She thinks carefully about how her words now might box her in as president and how they sound abroad. In an April interview with POLITICO's Glenn Thrush, Clinton lamented the way the breakneck speed of modern media pressures her to weigh in on events too fast. "I've asked for information from, you know, three or four different sources. I haven't had time to digest it. I can't answer the question to my satisfaction," Clinton said.

Clinton is also mindful of her ally in the White House: Barack Obama. Any call Clinton makes to escalate the terrorism fight will be read as critique of the president, whom she has tightly embraced. She has recently muted her talk of establishing a no-fly-zone in Syria, an idea she vigorously endorsed last fall, for fear of complicating the Obama administration’s delicate negotiations with Russia, Iran and others to wind down Syria’s civil war. (Obama has called the idea of a no-fly zone “half-baked.”)

As a result, Clinton is constrained from serving up vows for tough, fast responses that many voters seem to find emotionally satisfying. After the Nice attack, Clinton pledged “an intelligence surge,” a proposal she first offered last fall, and which — whatever its substantive merits — feels abstract. She also pledged support for NATO in an apparent attempt to draw a contrast with Trump, who has criticized the transatlantic alliance. Neither gambit is likely to resonate much with voters.

Clinton’s team understands the need to talk about terrorism in plan English, though they share a frustration with President Obama on that score. The modern terrorism threat has no easy answer, and the strategy that Clinton and Obama agree on, for the most part, is a hodgepodge of dry-sounding initiatives ranging from outreach to Muslim-American communities to political reform in Iraq. Trump, meanwhile, offers blunt ideas like halting Muslims from entering the U.S. (a proposal he recently revised to cover visitors from countries with “a proven history of terrorism”).

When terror strikes, Clinton or her senior aides in at campaign headquarters in Brooklyn usually consult quickly with her top counterterror advisors, Rand Beers and Daniel Benjamin. Beers served as deputy homeland security adviser in the Obama White House until early 2015 and Benjamin was Clinton’s top counterterror adviser at the State Department. Discussions of crises in Europe also include Julie Smith, a former national security aide to Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump, unimpressed by Clinton’s gaggle of experts, makes Clinton herself an issue in the aftermath of terror attacks. “She is very weak,” he told Bill O’Reilly during his own call-in to Fox on Thursday night.

Trump also focused on Clinton’s reluctance to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” words both she and Obama, mindful of how their rhetoric echoes around the world, believe could alienate moderate Muslims.

Benjamin cited Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims as a particularly self-destructive example of how the GOP nominee-in-waiting talks. In December, Trump referred to a “sickness” within the Muslim world, saying “They’re sick people. There’s a sickness going on.”

“What Muslim leader is ever going to meet with that guy?” Benjamin asked.