Sawt Falasteen - Harris blitzes battlegrounds as Trump schedule raises eyebrows

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 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 at his home in south Florida Thursday.

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.

- 'Low energy' -

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 free-wheeling hour-plus news conference.

He complained about coverage of Harris's large crowds and assailed her for avoiding holding her own media availability.

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 former California governor Jerry Brown.

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 face-off on September 10.

- 'Unify and organize' -

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.

The first large survey of Latino voters with Harris as the presumptive nominee -- commissioned by voter engagement group Somos PAC -- showed Harris leading Trump by 18 points in the battleground states.

"The stakes of this election require Latinos to unify and organize together like our lives depend on it," Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said, welcoming Harris's endorsement by the League of United Latin American Citizens.

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 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.

J.AbuHassan--SF-PST