Donald Trump announced on Thursday morning that he would hold an afternoon press conference at Mar-a-Lago. His reasons for doing so were unclear, but many assumed it was partly an effort to highlight Kamala Harris’s lack of media interviews since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, and partly a desperate attempt to regain America’s attention.
Afterward, it still wasn’t entirely clear what Trump was doing, aside from delighting Democrats. He did make some news, proposing three debates with Harris (ABC News said both candidates have agreed to a September 10 debate, but the other two debates have yet to be confirmed). But the rest of the hour-long press conference was the usual stream-of-consciousness mix of factually dubious laments and attacks on his political foes. Trump repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s first name, questioned her intelligence, and claimed that he drew a bigger crowd for his January 6, 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally than Martin Luther King Jr. did for his “I Have a Dream” speech. Below is our reverse chronological account of what happened, as it happened.
This is a developing story.
Trump repeatedly called Harris stupid during the press conference, saying “in terms of intelligence, Hillary was far superior,” and riffing about how she’s “not as smart as Biden.”
Later he claimed, once again, that she “couldn’t pass the bar exam.”
Harris did fail the California bar exam the first time she took it (which is not uncommon). But she passed in 1990, a year after she graduated from law school.
An hour into Trump’s rambling remarks, CNN pulled away from its live coverage in order to start fact-checking some of his statements in real time.
Florida residents are set to vote on an abortion rights amendment later this fall which would bar the state government from placing limits on the procedure if approved. Trump said that he will reveal how he intends to vote on the amendment at a later date rather than in front of the assembled media today.
As Trump uses the bulk of his remarks to rail against Harris, her campaign is sharing its own clips of his press conference on social media. The sections highlighted include Trump calling a reporter’s question “stupid,” his complaints about crowd size, and him boasting that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un liked him more than Harris.
He complains “a lot of people aren’t talking about” January 6 anymore, claims “nobody was killed on January 6,” and says the rioters were treated “unfairly.”
The former president has mostly been holed up at Mar-a-Lago lately, while his running mate hits the trail. Trump’s explanation for his absence: ““I’m leading by a lot and doing tremendous amounts of taping here.”
Trump went on a lengthy tangent about the size of his rally crowds compared to the Harris campaign’s, saying that her recent events only had a couple thousand people in attendance. The former president claimed, without evidence, that no other politician in history has ever had crowds as large as his.
Many on social media noted that Trump’s remarks didn’t line up with official accounts of Harris’s rallies this week.
Here’s what makes Walz “heavy into the transgender world,” per The Telegraph:
The 60-year-old signed a bill into law establishing Minnesota as a “trans refuge”, as well as an executive order last year making the state among the first to protect access to gender-affirming health care.
Trump said that he’s agreed to several presidential debates against Harris with different television networks: Fox News on September 4, NBC News on September 10 as well as ABC on September 25. However, he might be playing fast and loose with some of the details.
Trump took a moment to complain about Vice President Kamala Harris taking the helm of the Democratic presidential ticket from President Joe Biden, a switch he is definitely not upset about.
“We have somebody that hasn’t received one vote for president and she’s running and that’s fine with me. But we were given Joe Biden and now we’re given somebody else and I think, frankly, I would rather be running against the somebody else, but that was their choice,” Trump said.
While reciting the bit of his stump speech where he claims migrants are flooding into the United States from prisons and mental institutions (which is not true) Trump repeated himself a few times, saying people are coming from “insane asylums,” which are “mental institution on steroids.” This is the part where he usually name-drops Hannibal Lecter, but he moved on without praising the “late, great” fictional cannibal.
He’s certainly not “bringing back the joy.”
That’s the theory put forth by his former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham.
Trump posted this message to Truth Social at 7:25 a.m. and provided no additional updates on what he plans to talk about.
