Donald Trump knows best: ‘better than the Federal Reserve’

The former president also called for three debates with Democratic Party rival Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump holds a press conference athis Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump called for three ­debates against Kamala Harris, said presidents should have influence over the Federal Reserve and conceded he might be losing support among black women during a news conference meant to recapture the spotlight after his rival picked up momentum.

The former president and 2024 Republican nominee said he agreed to a September 4 debate on Fox News, a September 10 debate on ABC, and a third on NBC on September 25. The ABC debate was previously agreed upon when President Joe Biden was in the race. Mr Trump had called into question whether he would face off on ABC with the Vice-President now at the top of the Democratic ticket.

“I hope she agrees to them,” Mr Trump said during the news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday (Friday AEST). “I think they will be very revealing.”

Ms Harris said she was looking forward to debating Mr Trump on September 10, which she had previously committed to. The Vice-President also said she was open to having another debate, without committing to the dates or networks Mr Trump tossed out.

Mr Trump asserted that he had better instincts than the central bank’s chairman and governors. “I feel that the president should have at least (a) say in there, yeah. I feel that strongly,” he said. “I think that, in my case, I made a lot of money. I was very successful and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”

Mr Trump criticised the Fed, arguing that the central bank had “gotten it wrong a lot”. He noted that he clashed with Fed chairman Jerome Powell while he was in the White House. “I fought him very hard,” he said. But “we got along fine”.

Mr Trump’s press conference was meant, in part, to draw a contrast with Ms Harris, whom the former president cast as dodging the news media. “She hasn’t done an interview,” Mr Trump said, echoing a line of attack from his campaign in recent days.

Nearly three weeks since Mr Biden dropped out of the race and Democrats coalesced around Ms Harris as the party’s presumptive nominee, the Vice-President hasn’t yet sat for an interview or taken public questions from reporters. She has held large rallies and given statements to reporters on the tarmac while travelling the country, but she hasn’t engaged with the press beyond those events.

Ms Harris’s campaign shot back, saying Mr Trump hasn’t kept up as rigorous a schedule and ­accused him of focusing on grievances rather than discussing a ­vision for the country. “It’s why voters will reject him again at the ballot box this ­November,” said Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa.

Mr Trump had been largely off the campaign trail since his most-recent rally in Georgia last Saturday, when he attacked Republican Governor Brian Kemp as “a bad guy” while characterising Ms Harris as overly liberal and weak on immigration. He was due to hold a rally in Montana on Friday night.

Mr Trump’s news conference followed a briefing by campaign aides for reporters in which they outlined their strategy for winning in November, largely by courting a sliver of undecided voters in battleground states.

“As long as we hold North Carolina, we just need to win Georgia and Pennsylvania,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio said.

Non-traditional battleground states such as Virginia and Minnesota – which the campaign said were in play when Mr Biden was in the race – remain in play with Ms Harris at the top of the ticket, senior Trump campaign officials said, further underscoring their view that Ms Harris’s recent bump in the polls won’t last. Early polling since the President left the race showed Ms Harris and Mr Trump locked in a dead heat nationally and Harris narrowly ahead in certain swing states.

Mr Trump acknowledged the changing landscape.

“It’s possible that I won’t do as well with black women, but I do seem to do very well with other segments,” he said, adding that he thought he was doing well with Hispanics, Jewish voters and white men. “White males have gone through the roof,” Mr Trump said.

He said he thought he was doing well with black men and might see less support from black females, but he said he could win some over. “I think ultimately they’ll like me better, because I’m going to give them security, safety and jobs,” Mr Trump said.

He played down the significance of abortion as an issue in the election, despite Ms Harris and Democrats making it a focal point.

The Wall Street Journal