On campaign trail, Kamala Harris blitzes battlegrounds, Donald Trump takes it easier

Donald Trump was to campaign Friday in a safe Republican state as Kamala Harris barnstorms the battlegrounds likely to decide November's election, carried by surge in momentum that has left her opponent scrambling.

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 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 will end on August 22.

The Harris campaign called the Republican former president "low energy"-a favorite Trump insult-while his former communications chief Alyssa Farah Griffin bemoaned Republicans not picking a "younger, more vibrant candidate."