Former President Donald Trump‘s wide-ranging and, at points, rambling press conference Thursday snatched back media attention from Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign, which has dominated the national attention with the announcement of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate.
Trump denounced Harris’s lack of questioning from the press and trashed her first presidential run in 2020 while challenging his Democratic rival to three presidential debates this campaign cycle.
Trump also embraced Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, who endorsed him for president.
“He’s very worried about the country,” Trump said about Musk. “And I don’t know if it’s good for him politically to have supported me, although I think we have a vast majority of this country does support me, but Elon, more than almost anybody I know.”
Here are the top seven takeaways from Trump’s roughly one-hour Mar-a-Lago press conference.
Trump agrees to debate Harris
After previously canceling a planned September presidential debate, Trump challenged Harris to three debates Thursday. Fox News would host the first debate on Sept. 4, ABC News would host the second debate on Sept. 10, and NBC News would host the third debate on Sept. 25.
“The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree. I don’t know if they’re going to agree,” said Trump.
Harris has only agreed to the Sept. 10 debate on ABC News. Her campaign did not respond to comment on the two other debates.
Trump debated President Joe Biden on June 27, but after a disastrous performance from Biden, Democrats pressured him to step down. Less than a month later, Biden suspended his campaign and endorsed Harris.
Trump knocks Harris for avoiding press but praises Hillary Clinton
Over the course of the one-hour conference, Trump repeatedly attacked Harris for not participating in any press conferences since she became the Democratic nominee and routinely insulted her intelligence.
“She hasn’t done an interview, she can’t do an interview, she’s barely competent, and she can’t do an interview,” Trump goaded Harris after announcing the three debates.
“She’s not doing any news conference. You know why she’s not doing it because she can’t do a news conference,” Trump later added as he taunted Harris about her failed 2020 presidential run against Biden. “She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference, and I’m sorry. We need smart people to lead this country.”
His comments questioning Harris’s intelligence may prove concerning for GOP leadership, which has pushed members to attack the vice president on policy above all else.
The remarks were notable given his embrace of Clinton, his former Democratic rival in 2016.
“So I’ve run against Hillary, and I’ve run against various other people. I would say that in terms of intelligence, Hillary was far superior,” Trump said. “I would say that Hillary was smart. She was her own worst enemy in many ways, but she was smart, very smart.”
Later on, he claimed that he avoided persecuting Clinton after defeating her in the 2016 election.
“You know, with Hillary Clinton, I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin,” Trump said when asked about pardoning Hunter Biden. “I thought it was a very bad thing. Take the wife of a president of the United States and put her in jail, and then I see the way they treat me. That’s the way it goes. But I was very protective of her. Nobody would understand that, but I was.”
Trump compares crowd size to March on Washington
Perhaps the most puzzling part of Trump’s remarks came when discussing the size of his campaign rallies — specifically the crowd of people who gathered on Jan. 6, 2021, for the “Stop the Steal” rally before storming the Capitol.
“The biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to before was that day, and I’ll tell you, it’s very hard to find a picture of that crowd,” Trump said.
He then went on to compare the crowd to the number of people who attended the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not, we had more,” Trump said. “And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.”
The crowd size debate came up in the context of Harris, who has been filling arenas since the president bowed out and she became the Democratic presidential nominee.
The Aug. 28, 1963, march saw roughly 250,000 descend on the capital, making it the biggest march on civil rights at the time. In comparison, the Associated Press reported 10,000 people were at the Jan. 6 rally.
Trump’s comments could harm his ability to woo black voters, who he claims are more receptive to his campaign.
“I was doing very well with black voters, and I still am. I seem to be doing very well with black males. This is according to polls,” Trump bragged.
Trump explains why he’s not campaigning as much
As Harris continues on her battleground state tour this week, Trump’s schedule has remained relatively light with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, bearing the brunt of the campaign schedule.
When questioned about his light schedule, Trump first called the question “stupid.”
“Because I’m leading by a lot and because I’m letting their convention go through,” Trump said. “And I’m campaigning a lot. I’m doing tremendous amounts of taping here. We have commercials that are at a level I don’t think that anybody’s ever done before.”
Harris narrowed the polling gap against Trump in just two weeks, with some battleground states polling in her favor. The Democratic National Convention will begin on Aug. 19, but Trump could announce new rallies between now and then.
The Harris campaign dismissed Trump’s remarks in an email sent out Thursday afternoon.
“Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a public meltdown,” the email read. “He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.”
Trump says there will be a peaceful transfer if he loses
The former president pushed back against claims from Joe Biden, who, in a forthcoming interview with CBS News set to air Sunday, said he’s “not confident at all” Trump would agree to a peaceful transfer if he lost the 2024 election.
“Of course, there’ll be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time,” Trump said. “And there will be a peaceful transfer. I just hope we’re going to have honest elections, that’s all.”
He also claimed that “The people of January 6 were treated very unfairly.”
In the past, the former president has warned if he loses the election, there will be a “bloodbath.” Trump famously challenged the results of the 2020 election, which resulted in federal and state indictments from special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
Trump downplays abortion problems
In a moment that is sure to be used by Democrats, Trump appeared to downplay the electoral impact of abortion access. The abortion matter, according to Trump, has “very much tempered down.”
“I think that abortion has become much less of an issue … it’s actually going to be a very small issue,” he later added.
Reproductive health access is among the top matters for the Harris-Walz ticket. Harris became the president’s top surrogate defending access to abortion as Trump has bragged about the Supreme Court knocking down Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Trump has attempted to minimize the effect of abortion on elections by not embracing a federal abortion ban, much to the consternation of social conservatives. But Democrats have still worked to tie Trump to horror stories of women facing life-harming pregnancies in the wake of 2022.
Trump appears in favor of marijuana legalization
Trump told reporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago that he starting “to agree a lot more” with marijuana legalization.
“You know it’s being legalized all over the country. Florida has something coming up. I’ll be making a statement about that fairly soon,” Trump teased when asked about the Biden administration’s stance on cannabis.
Florida’s Adult Personal Use of Marijuana amendment will appear on the November ballot. If 60% of voters approve the measure, it will go into effect almost as soon as March 2025 and allow adults 21 and older to possess marijuana for nonmedicinal reasons.
“But as we legalize it throughout the country, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s awfully hard to have people all over the jails that are in jail right now for something that’s legal,” Trump continued. “So I think obviously there’s a lot of sentiment to doing that.”
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