Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris will debate Sept. 10 on ABC, marking the first head-to-head matchup between the rivals in what polls show is an extremely tight race.
At a news conference at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence, Trump said he wanted additional debates on Sept. 4 and 25 that would be broadcast on Fox and NBC.
Harris said in a post on X that she was looking forward to the Sept. 10 debate after Trump “finally committed.” She told reporters after a campaign stop in Detroit that she was open to talking about more debates.
Trump had previously suggested he might withdraw from the ABC debate, which was scheduled before Harris, the US vice president, replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee less than three weeks ago, upending the race.
An Ipsos poll released on Thursday showed Harris had widened her lead over Trump since late July. She leads Trump by 42% to 37%, compared with a Reuters/Ipsos poll from July 22-23, which showed her leading Trump by 37% to 34%.
The news conference was Trump's first public appearance since Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.
Harris and Walz have headlined rallies in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin this week, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in a further sign of how their late entry into the race has galvanized Democrats.
Her rapid rise has forced Trump’s team to recalibrate its strategy and message. Opinion polls show Harris has eliminated the lead Trump had built over President Joe Biden, and Democrats have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and big donors in a matter of weeks.
Trump insisted Thursday that he has not altered his approach to the race, arguing that Harris shares responsibility for Biden's record.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters that lasted more than an hour, Trump jumped from topic to topic, claiming Harris and Walz were weak candidates who were already falling in the polls.
Trump, however, lamented that he would not be able to face Biden in the November 5 election, suggesting that the president was the victim of an unconstitutional plot to oust him from the Democratic nomination.
Biden abandoned his faltering re-election bid under pressure from fellow Democrats worried about his chances of victory after a poor debate performance against Trump.
Asked about his controversial comments last week that Harris, who is of Black and Indian descent, recently “turned black,” Trump said: “You'll have to ask her that question, because she was the one that said it, not me… It doesn't matter to me. But to her, from her point of view, I think it's very disrespectful to both of them, really, whether you're Indian or black, I think it's very disrespectful to both of them.”
Trump's opening remarks, delivered before an audience of black journalists, sparked widespread condemnation and left donors and aides bewildered and alarmed.
On Thursday, Trump also mocked the size of the crowds attending Harris' campaign, even though they have been no different than his own of late. He falsely claimed that the size of the crowd he addressed on Jan. 6, 2021, the day his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, was as large as the one that packed the National Mall in Washington for Dr. Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
“We actually had a bigger crowd,” Trump said. “But that's fine with me, because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.”
Echoing a recent line of attack from his campaign, Trump criticized Harris for not granting a press interview since launching her campaign.
“She can't do an interview. She's barely competent,” Trump said, before going on to call her “nasty,” a phrase he often uses to disparage women who criticize him.
Trump has given a steady stream of interviews to the media, though they are usually with friendly, right-leaning outlets and journalists. On Wednesday, he called into the morning show “Fox & Friends” and took questions from the show's hosts.
Trump announced the news conference on Thursday morning on his social media platform, and only a select group of journalists were given the advance notice necessary to travel to his Florida resort in time. Reuters was not invited.
Harris answered a handful of questions from reporters after meeting with autoworkers in Detroit on Thursday, following the United Auto Workers union's endorsement of her candidacy. She said she wants to schedule a face-to-face interview “before the end of the month.”
