(AFP) – Donald Trump was to campaign Friday in a safe Republican state as Kamala Harris barnstorms the battlegrounds likely to decide November’s election, carried by a surge in momentum that has left her opponent scrambling. With election day just three months away, Trump’s light schedule — a rally every four or five days — has been contrasted with the hectic program of an opponent almost 20 years his junior, and his with his own vigorous campaigning in 2016.
The 78-year-old tycoon has held just five rallies since the Republican National Convention concluded in mid-July — one fewer than Harris is staging this week alone — and has no events at all announced yet for next week. Eight years ago, Trump was staging multiple events a day by August, but the oldest major party presidential nominee in US history is venturing out of Florida for the first time this week for a rally in Montana, a state he should win easily.
The ex-president, who survived an assassination attempt at a rally last month, bristled at questions over his schedule in a hastily convened press conference Thursday at his home in south Florida. He said he had been absent from battleground states because he was “leading by a lot and because I’m letting their convention go through,” a reference to the Democratic National Convention, which doesn’t end until August 22.
The Harris campaign called the ex-president “low energy” — a favorite Trump insult — while his former communications chief Alyssa Farah Griffin bemoaned Republicans not picking a “younger, more vibrant candidate.” Trump appeared on track to win back the White House before Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, but Harris has made big gains since replacing the president at the top of the ticket and naming running mate Tim Walz.
Her rise appears to have wrongfooted Trump, who dismissed her surging polling numbers as he held court in front of journalists at his Mar-a-Lago estate for a freewheeling hour-plus news conference. He complained about coverage of Harris’s large crowds and assailed her for avoiding interviews.
And in a bizarre moment that made headlines, he related an anecdote about a helicopter near-miss that never happened, in which he appeared to confuse former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s governor for most of the 2010s. He pitched three September debates — mixing up the dates of the showdowns he was proposing — and attacked Harris as unintelligent and incompetent.
Former prosecutor Harris — praised for her forensic questioning as a senator and for her performance in the vice-presidential debate in 2020 — immediately confirmed one of the dates, an ABC News face-off on September 10.
Meanwhile, Harris continues her tour of the swing states alongside Walz, with a stop in the racially diverse southwestern battlegrounds of Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Saturday. Formerly worried White House aides have begun to rekindle their enthusiasm over the possibility of victory in the two states, which were shifted this week from “lean Republican” to “toss up” by election forecaster Cook Political Report.
Harris campaign spokesman James Singer said the vice president was “earning every vote” with her travel this week. “Our campaign is centered around what unites America: opportunity, freedom, and love of country,” he said. “Donald Trump is too lazy to fight for anything but himself or leave his country club — fine by us.”
Policy has taken a backseat in an election overwhelmed in recent weeks by Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the assassination bid on Trump, and Harris’s surge. But Harris and Biden will discuss tackling inflation — a top concern for voters and a winning issue for Trump — in Maryland next week at their first joint campaign trip since the president’s withdrawal.
– Robyn Beck with Frankie Taggart in Washington
© 2024 AFP
