DETROIT:
Kamala Harris on Friday questioned Donald Trump’s fitness for the presidency, as the oldest major party White House nominee in history faced speculation he is “exhausted” after backing out of several interviews.
While he has been appearing on friendly TV networks, the 78-year-old Republican has cancelled meetings with media outlets including NBC, CNBC and CBS. He has also refused to take part in a second debate with Harris after being soundly defeated in the first debate.
Politico reported that a Trump aide had told interview producers on a website that the former president was “exhausted” and declining certain appearances — a claim his campaign described as “detached from reality.”
But Harris, who turns 60 this weekend, attacked Trump over his health and resilience.
“If you’re exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you’re fit for the hardest job in the world,” Harris told supporters during several stops in the swing state of Michigan.
The former president has rarely been idle, continuing his busy schedule of appearances with new and traditional media, but most have been on outlets where he is rarely challenged.
Trump reacted angrily to Harris’s jibe, telling reporters he hadn’t canceled anything and calling his Democratic rival a “loser” who “doesn’t have the energy of a rabbit.”
Dueling rallies
He also claimed she is “beating” him in the polls and that she did not pass the bar exam.
Harris — a former California attorney general who passed the bar exam in 1990 — holds a slight lead in national polling averages, while several polls in Michigan in October show her neck-and-neck.
Trump has surprised analysts with a schedule that mixes swing state stops with appearances in areas he has no chance of winning but where he is guaranteed big crowds.
He was in the liberal stronghold of New York on Thursday for a Catholic charity dinner, where he mocked Harris with a sometimes mean-spirited speech that drew surprise from people for its profanity-laced remarks and expletives.
But he was back in his home region for a softer interview with Fox News on Friday morning before heading to Michigan for counterprogramming against Harris.
Both candidates are spending their final campaign days in crucial battleground states, where early voting is already underway.
With less than three weeks until the election, Harris has seen signs from her supporters encouraging them to vote as early as possible, a bulwark against the traditional Republican edge among Election Day voters.
Nearly 12 million votes had been cast as of Friday evening — about a third of them in the seven swing states that decided the election, according to data tracked by the University of Florida Elections Lab.
Early voting surges
Georgia is breaking records, while North Carolina on Thursday reported a first day of voting that was better than 2020, when there was a pandemic-linked surge in early ballots.
Where party breakdowns were available, registered Democrats accounted for about half of the total, while Republicans — who have spent much of the Trump era expressing skepticism about drop boxes and mailed ballots — accounted for about a third.
After her event in Grand Rapids, Harris targeted blue-collar voters with remarks at a union hall in Lansing, delivering a more manufacturing-focused speech in which she argued that the future of the labor movement was “at stake” in the November election.
She was scheduled to hold an evening rally in Oakland County on Saturday before returning to Detroit.
The Democrat has found herself on eggshells as she upholds President Joe Biden’s support for key ally Israel, while Muslim and Arab American voters — particularly in Michigan — have expressed outrage over the deaths in Gaza.
The killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar made Harris hopeful for a Gaza ceasefire, but Israel quickly said his death was not the end of a campaign launched in response to the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Speaking to reporters ahead of a speech in Detroit, Trump said Sinwar’s death raised the prospect of a peaceful resolution to the war in Gaza – while warning Biden not to try to preempt Israel.
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