Trump offers three September debates against surging Harris

Palm Alm Beach: Donald Trump proposed three September debates against Kamala Harris Thursday as he sought to wrest back some of the attention lavished on his rival since her blockbuster entry into the US presidential election. Harris has ignited the Democratic ticket in the last 18 days, pulling in record fundraising and obliterating the Republican ex-president's polling lead to open up a much broader path to victory than her party would have dared to hope for just a month ago.

The country's first female, Black and South Asian vice president heads into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month on the back of a series of packed rallies that have won plaudits for a positive message that has reenergized the base. Meanwhile Trump -- who addressed journalists at his oceanfront estate in Florida -- has found himself on unfamiliar ground as something of a bystander, eclipsed by Harris's rise as he has scaled back his own campaigning.

"I hope she agrees," Trump told journalists, after he said he had arranged debates with television networks on September 4, 10 and 25. Harris responded Thursday that she would "look forward" to facing off on ABC News on September 10, a previously scheduled debate that the two campaigns had sparred over after Trump temporarily backed out. There was no immediate word from the Harris camp about the other proposed dates, the first with Trump-friendly Fox News and the final with NBC News.

The news conference was his first public appearance since Harris



-- a generation younger than Trump at 59 -- announced running mate Tim Walz and embarked on a tour of closely fought election battlegrounds. She and Walz appeared Thursday in Michigan ahead of a trip to the racially diverse "Sun Belt" states of Arizona and Nevada for rallies on Friday and Saturday. "The true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It's based on who you lift up," she told a crowd of around 170 supporters in Detroit, at a much smaller event than her recent arena rallies. Sabato's Crystal Ball, a leading election forecaster, shifted three of its ratings in favor of Democrats on Wednesday, moving Minnesota and New Hampshire from "leans Democratic" to "likely Democratic" and Georgia from "leans Republican" to "toss-up." 

Meanwhile Marquette University Law School released a nationwide survey showing that, among likely voters, Harris now leads Trump by six points -- 53 percent to 47 percent. Despite her intensive campaign schedule, Harris has taken almost no questions from reporters since entering the race and Trump had been seeking to turn her lack of media exposure into an election issue even before Thursday's news conference. "She hasn't done an interview -- she can't do an interview, she's barely competent... But I look forward to the debates, because I think we have to set the record straight," he said in Florida. Harris said later Thursday: "I've talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month."