Donald Trump gave an hour-long press conference on Wednesday in which he reiterated his commitment to debate Vice President Kamala Harris and taunted her, repeating old falsehoods and hitting back at questions about the response his campaign is receiving.
Trump, addressing reporters at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, came as ABC announced that Trump and Democratic nominee Harris have agreed to a presidential debate on Sept. 10, setting up a widely anticipated face-off in an already unprecedented presidential election. Trump said he has proposed three presidential debates with the three television networks in September.
Trump again insisted there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 and renewed attacks on Republican rivals such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, whom Trump has harshly criticized since Kemp refused to go along with his false theories of election fraud. However, answering more than a dozen questions from reporters, Trump sought to draw comparisons with Harris, who has not held a news conference since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.
Another crucial moment in the election has arrived
Trump’s decision to go on ABC, days after posting on his social media accounts that he would not appear on the network, sets up a much-anticipated moment in the election where Biden’s catastrophic performance in the final debate had triggered his comeback.
“I think it’s very important to have a debate,” Trump said Thursday. “I’m looking forward to the debate because I think we have to set the record straight.”
There was no immediate comment from the Harris campaign.
Thursday’s event was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Trump called Walz a “radical left-wing guy.”
“It’s never happened between him and them,” Trump said. “Certainly there’s never been anybody as generous as those two.”
He has repeatedly said Harris is not intelligent enough to debate him. Harris, for her part, has tried to goad Trump into a debate and recently told an audience in Atlanta that if he had anything to say about her, he should ” say it to my face,
Trump became visibly upset when asked about Harris’ crowd and the Democratic Party’s newfound enthusiasm and dismissed questions about his low-key campaign schedule as stupid.
Trump says he has not “reorganized” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, which some Republican strategists have complained about in hushed tones.
When asked what assets Harris owns, Trump said: “She’s a woman. She represents a certain group of people.”
Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — accused Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of previously downplaying the fact that she is Black.
Trump asked questions about abortion
Trump suggested abortion would not be a major issue in the campaign and the November result.
He asserted that the matter has “become much less of an issue” since the Supreme Court struck down the federal constitutional right to abortion services and returned control of the matter to state governments. But the issue is widely seen as a general election liability, and Trump named states such as Ohio and Kansas that have since voted to protect abortion rights.
Trump also said he hoped Florida would “go a little bit more liberal than people are expecting” when it votes to overturn its abortion ban later this year, but he did not answer a question about how he would vote.
Trump argued that Democrats, Republicans and “everyone” are happy with the results of the 2022 decision, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
However, Trump’s actions within the Republican Party suggest that he knows Democrats have already capitalized on Republican opposition to abortion rights and could do so again this fall. Trump single-handedly ensured that the Republican Party platform adopted at the 2024 convention in Milwaukee did not call for a national ban on abortion, and he has repeatedly said that radicals in the party could hurt Republicans in November.
The court’s decision, issued just months before the 2022 midterm elections, is widely cited as a reason Democrats did far better than expected in House and Senate contests. And Democrats have attacked Trump in paid ads blaming him and the judges he appointed for ending Roe.
Trump again made false claims on January 6
Donald Trump falsely claims during a press conference that “nobody was killed on January 6th”, the date in 2021 when pro-Trump rioters breached the US Capitol amid Congress’ attempt to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran of San Diego, was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken door into the Capitol building during the violent riot.
Of course, Trump has often cited Babbitt’s death to lament the treatment of those who attended a rally outside the White House that day then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police and entered the building.
“I think those people were treated terribly. When you compare it to other events that have happened in this country where a lot of people were killed,” Trump said Thursday, adding, “Nobody was killed on January 6th.”
He also falsely claimed that his “Stop the Steal” speech before the riots drew more people than the 1963 March on Washington, the same historic event where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
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