After falling in the polls, Donald Trump agreed on Thursday to debate Vice President Kamala Harris in September and increased the pressure on his Democratic opponent to answer questions from the media.
“She’s barely competent,” Trump said of the vice president at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. “She’s not smart enough to do a press conference.”
In a 65-minute exchange with reporters, the former president hurled a series of insults at Harris, repeated wild and misleading claims and described the United States in stark, apocalyptic terms: “We could literally be in the middle of the Depression,” he said. “We are in great danger of being in World War III.”
Trump accused Harris of destroying California and San Francisco. “Everything she has touched has turned into something bad,” he said.
The Republican candidate, who has long had a contentious relationship with mainstream media outlets that he calls “fake news,” challenged reporters to do a more thorough job of questioning Harris.
“I just hope that the media becomes more diligent, more honest, frankly, because if they’re not honest, it’s going to be a lot harder to get our country back,” Trump said. “We have a very, very sick country right now.”
As Trump was taking questions from reporters, ABC confirmed on social media that the two presidential candidates had agreed to a debate next month. Trump told reporters he was also willing to participate in additional debates in September with Fox News and NBC.
In response, Harris said on X: “I heard that Donald Trump has finally committed to debating me on September 10th. I look forward to it.”
After a campaign rally in Michigan, Harris told reporters Thursday afternoon that she was ready for an in-person interview. “I want us to schedule an interview before the end of the month,” she said.
Trump relied on many of the usual GOP talking points in describing Harris as a “radical leftist” and a “loser” who is weak on crime and the border. He questioned how she had become the Democratic nominee after President Biden ended his reelection campaign, pointing out that in 2019 she dropped out early in the 2020 presidential primaries.
“She was the first loser,” he said of Harris, who dropped out in 2019 after former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania and former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. “The fact that you can’t get votes, lose in the primary system … and then be chosen to run for president seems to be actually unconstitutional.”
In criticizing Harris’s intelligence, Trump made the misleading claim that she “failed to pass her bar exam.” Harris failed the California bar exam on her first attempt in 1989, but passed it in 1990, a year after her graduation.
“No one died on January 6,” he said. In fact, several people died in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including a Trump supporter who was shot and killed by Capitol Police.
“We're ahead by a big margin in Georgia,” he said on the same day that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its ratings for Georgia, Arizona and Nevada from “moderate Republican” to “tie.”
As the race becomes more competitive — Democrats are seeing a surge of popular enthusiasm and polls show Harris gaining ground — Trump told reporters his strategy had not changed.
“I haven’t recalibrated the strategy at all,” Trump said. “It’s the same policies: open borders, little crime fighting.”
Asked about abortion, he said it was “much less of an issue” in the campaign.
Harris, he said, was “worse than Biden” and compared her unfavorably to his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton: “In terms of intelligence,” Trump said, “Hillary was far superior.”
Former President Trump speaks to reporters during Thursday's press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
(Alex Brandon/Associated Press)
Following the press conference, Harris’ campaign delivered a scathing critique of reporters in an email titled: “Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Average Press Conference.”
The subtitle: “Split screen: joy and freedom from whatever that was.”
“Donald Trump took a break to put on some pants and stage an almost imminent public meltdown,” Harris’ campaign wrote before listing a long list of her false claims. “He hasn’t campaigned all week. He won’t be going to any key states this week. But he sure is furious that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are drawing huge crowds in battleground states.”
The former president’s campaign momentum has waned since Biden abruptly ended his reelection bid and endorsed Harris. National polls show Trump’s lead among likely voters shrinking in key states as Harris has dominated news coverage over the past week, formally securing the Democratic presidential nomination and naming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
On Thursday morning, Trump attempted to fight back, attacking Harris on his Truth Social site for failing to engage with the media and arguing that her policies on immigration, the environment, LGBTQ+ issues and the Middle East were “CATASTROPHIC.”
“Kamala is refusing to give interviews because her team realizes she can’t answer questions, just like Biden couldn’t answer questions, but for different reasons,” Trump wrote. “He is simply ‘deceased’ and she is simply ‘incompetent.’”
“If she is elected, our county, [sic] and, in fact, the world will suffer a 1929-style Great Depression,” Trump added.
Harris, who clinched the Democratic nomination without the scrutiny of a public primary campaign or debate, has not participated in any substantive interviews on the record with reporters in the 18 days since Biden dropped out.
Over the past week, the vice president has crisscrossed the country, delivering slightly different versions of the same speech in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Last week, she briefly answered a question from the media as she and Biden welcomed American prisoners returning from Russia.
Trump vowed on social media Thursday to “expose” the vice president “the same way I exposed Crooked Joe, Hillary and all the others during the debates. Only I think it will be easier with Kamala!”
In recent days, Trump has posted a series of false claims and fanciful speculation on social media. On Tuesday, he claimed that Biden would appear at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and try to take back the nomination from Harris. “He feels he made a historically tragic mistake by handing the Presidency of the United States, in a COUP, to the people in the world he hates most, and he wants it back, NOW!!” Trump wrote.
Trump also claimed without evidence Thursday that journalists underestimate crowd sizes at his rallies.
Just weeks ago, many political observers considered Trump unassailable after he survived an assassination attempt on July 13 during a rally by jumping up and down and pumping his fist in the air.
But in the past two weeks, she has received a flurry of negative publicity. On July 31, she engaged in a hostile exchange with Black journalists in Chicago, sparking outrage for falsely accusing Harris of changing the way she talks about her racial identity.
On Saturday, Trump drew criticism from fellow Republicans after getting into a fight at a rally in Atlanta with a popular GOP figure, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom he blamed for his 2020 loss to Biden.
“He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy. And he's a very mediocre governor,” Trump said of Kemp, who won re-election against Stacey Abrams in 2022 by 7.5 percentage points.
Republican strategists have characterized the recent surge in Democratic enthusiasm as a fleeting “Harris honeymoon,” but polls show Harris gaining ground on Trump nationally and in several key states.
State polling averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com show significant movement in Harris’ favor in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin since July 21, when Trump led by 2 to 4 points. Harris now holds a slight lead, within the margin of error, in those states of 0.7 to 1.6 points.
“Three weeks ago, Donald Trump led President Joe Biden in the Cook Political Report’s national polling index by about 2.5%,” Cook editor-in-chief Amy Walter wrote on Thursday. “Today, Kamala Harris leads Trump by less than a point, a shift of more than three points in Harris’s direction.”
