PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump gave an hourlong information convention Wednesday during which he recommitted to debating Vice President Kamala Harris and taunted her whereas additionally repeating outdated falsehoods and lashing out at questions in regards to the enthusiasm her marketing campaign is receiving.
As Trump addressed reporters at his Palm Seaside, Florida, property, ABC introduced that Trump and Harris, the Democratic nominee, have agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate, organising a extensively anticipated faceoff in an already unparalleled presidential election. Trump mentioned he had proposed three presidential debates with three tv networks in September.
Trump once more insisted there had been a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 and renewed assaults on Republican rivals like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump has harshly criticized since Kemp refused to associate with his false theories of election fraud. In taking greater than a dozen questions from reporters, nonetheless, Trump tried to attract a distinction with Harris, who has not held a information convention since she grew to become the probably Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
One other key second within the election is ready
Trump’s resolution to go on ABC, days after posting on his social media account that he wouldn’t seem on the community, units up a extremely anticipated second in an election the place Biden’s catastrophic efficiency within the final debate set in movement his withdrawal.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump mentioned Thursday. “I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.”
The Harris marketing campaign had no quick remark.
Thursday’s occasion was Trump’s first public look since Harris chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her operating mate. Trump known as Walz a “radical left man.”
“Between her and him, there’s never been anything like this,” Trump mentioned. “There’s certainly never been anybody so liberal like these two.”
He repeatedly urged Harris was not clever sufficient to debate him. Harris, for her half, has tried to goad Trump into debating and informed an viewers in Atlanta lately that if he had something to say about her, he ought to “ say it to my face.”
Trump grew visibly perturbed when pressed on Harris’ crowds and newfound Democratic enthusiasm, dismissing a query about his lighter marketing campaign schedule as silly.
Trump says he has not “recalibrated” his marketing campaign regardless of going through a brand new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about.
When requested what property Harris possessed, Trump mentioned: “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — accused Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of beforehand downplaying that she is Black.
Trump takes questions on abortion
Trump urged abortion won’t be a significant subject within the marketing campaign and the result in November.
He insisted that the matter “has become much less of an issue” for the reason that Supreme Court docket ended the federal constitutional proper to abortion providers and returned management of the matter to state governments. However the subject is extensively seen as a basic election legal responsibility, and Trump named states resembling Ohio and Kansas which have since voted to guard abortion rights.
Trump additionally mentioned he anticipated Florida “will go in a little more liberal way than people thought” when it votes to repeal an abortion ban later this yr, however he didn’t reply to questions asking how he would vote.
Trump argued that Democrats, Republicans and “everybody” are happy with the outcomes of the 2022 ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade resolution.
Trump’s actions inside the GOP, nonetheless, recommend he is aware of that Democrats have already got capitalized on Republican opposition to abortion rights and will achieve this once more this fall. Trump single-handedly ensured that the Republican Occasion platform adopted on the 2024 conference in Milwaukee doesn’t name for a nationwide ban on abortion, and he has mentioned repeatedly that hardliners within the get together might value the GOP in November.
The court docket’s resolution, issued months forward of the 2022 midterm elections, is extensively cited as a cause that Democrats fared significantly better than anticipated in Home and Senate contests. And Democrats have hammered Trump in paid commercials blaming him and the justices he appointed for ending Roe.
Trump once more makes false claims on Jan. 6
Donald Trump falsely claimed in the course of the press convention that “nobody was killed on Jan. 6,” the date in 2021 when pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol amid Congress’ effort to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Power veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed by way of a damaged a part of a Capitol door in the course of the violent riot that breached the constructing.
To make certain, Trump has usually cited Babbitt’s demise whereas lamenting the therapy of those that first attended a rally outdoors the White Home that day, then marched to the Capitol, lots of whom fought with police and entered the constructing.
“I think those people were treated very badly. When you compare it to other things that took place in this country where a lot of people were killed,” Trump mentioned Thursday, including “nobody was killed on Jan. 6.”
He additionally falsely claimed he drew extra individuals to his speech at a “Stop the Steal” speech earlier than the riot than the well-known March on Washington in 1963, the enduring occasion at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
