(AFP) – White House hopeful Kamala Harris travels Thursday to the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where she will reportedly spend five days preparing for next week’s presidential debate against Donald Trump. Ahead of Tuesday’s showdown with her Republican rival in Philadelphia, Harris heads to Pittsburgh. She does not have campaign events publicly scheduled there but is expected to meet informally with voters. She will spend much of her time strategizing with advisors and honing her attack lines, The Washington Post and CNN reported.
Harris’s entry into the race six weeks ago turbocharged enthusiasm among Democrats who were despondent about President Joe Biden’s chances against Trump, but both parties are bracing for a close election on November 5. Pennsylvania, Georgia, and a handful of other swing states are expected to be decisive, and polls show most of those races within the margin of error. “This race is going to be tight until the very end,” Harris told a rally crowd Wednesday in New Hampshire, where she unveiled economic proposals including a lower capital-gains tax rate than Biden’s plan, a bid to attract moderate voters. “We are running as the underdog,” she added.
While Vice President Harris engages in debate prep, her running mate Tim Walz is barnstorming Pennsylvania and hosts a campaign rally Thursday evening in Erie, north of Pittsburgh. The debate will be the first-ever meeting between Harris and Trump, as the former president refused to attend Biden’s inauguration after falsely claiming he was cheated in the 2020 election. Harris’s Pennsylvania huddle mirrors Biden’s week-long preparation at Camp David in Maryland for his calamitous June 27 debate with Trump, which effectively ended his presidential campaign.
She has enlisted “House of Cards” consultant Karen Dunn, who led debate prep for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as top policy advisor Rohini Kosoglu. Trump, 78, has said he is preparing, as he did against Biden, through speaking engagements on the campaign trail and policy discussions with a tight circle of aides.
During a Fox News town hall Wednesday in Pennsylvania, the Republican baselessly accused debate host ABC of bias, called the network and one of its star anchors “nasty,” and made unfounded claims that Harris would be shown the debate questions in advance. “They’re very nasty, and I think a lot of people are going to be watching to see how nasty they are, how unfair they are,” Trump complained. ABC News released its debate rules Wednesday, and like the Biden-Trump showdown, a candidate’s microphones will be muted while the time belongs to the other candidate. There will be no audience in the room, and “no topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates,” ABC said in a statement.
On Thursday, Trump will speak remotely to a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas and in person at the Economic Club of New York. His legal woes returned to the fore Thursday, as a court in Washington convened prosecutors and defense lawyers for a hearing over Trump’s case on charges he conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty. It marks the first Trump hearing since the US Supreme Court ruled that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office.
The White House called Thursday on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stop interfering” in the election after he wryly claimed he backs Harris. “The only people who should get to determine who the next president of the United States are the American people,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. – Jim WATSON
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