- Donald Trump attacked his new opponent in a telephone press conference
- He said he was prepared for multiple debates with Kamala Harris
- READ MORE: Follow all the latest developments in our live politics blog
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday he was ready and willing to face Kamala Harris in a debate after she was anointed as his new opponent.
The next debate was scheduled to be between Trump and Joe Biden on September 10, hosted by ABC.
But that was thrown into doubt after Biden dropped out and the former president expressed doubts about letting the network take over.
In a telephone news conference on Tuesday, he dismissed Harris’s abilities as a campaigner and said he was willing to debate her more than once.
“I would like to,” he said. “I think it’s important.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday he was ready and willing to face Kamala Harris in a debate after she was anointed as his new opponent.
‘I’m not very happy with ABC because it’s really fake news.
“I saw it last night. They’re actually trying to make Joe Biden into a hero when he was the worst president ever.”
Trump and his campaign quickly moved to attack Harris after Biden announced Sunday that he would not seek reelection.
And the former president said he could imagine multiple clashes with Harris on the debate stage.
“I don’t like the idea of ABC, I would be willing to do more than one debate, actually,” he said.
Trump is already emboldened by having eliminated one candidate from the race with a debate. It was Biden’s hesitant and awkward appearance at the state debate in Atlanta that triggered the first doubts and calls for him to step aside.
Harris, she told reporters, was fearless after her disastrous 2020 presidential campaign ended almost as soon as it had begun.
“If she campaigns like that now, it’s only going to be harder, even though she has a lot of support from the fake news community. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
“But if she campaigns like she did then, you know, I suspect she won’t be too tough.”
Harris was named the presumptive Democratic nominee this week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race amid declining support.
U.S. Border Patrol Confined Space Entry Team agents search for migrants attempting to enter the United States from Mexico in a storm drain system in El Paso, Texas.
Trump during a visit to the Mexican border in Eagle Pass, Texas, in February
He made his comments during a call designed to link Harris to the past three and a half years of crisis at the border.
Biden appointed her to address the long-term drivers of immigration from the “Northern Triangle” of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. She helped spur $5 billion in investment.
However, Republicans have successfully spread the idea that she was the “border czar,” responsible for the entire immigration crisis.
Trump and two officials from the border agents union reiterated that idea during the call.
“He’s just like Biden, but much more radical. He’s a radical leftist person,” Trump said.
“This country doesn’t want a radical leftist person destroying it. She’s much more radical than he is. She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody else wants.”
Trump said he plans to make more trips to the border during the campaign.